


Everything in You

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Courtroom Drama, Cross-Generation Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Heavy Subjects, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, May add tags, Omega Verse, Plotty, Rating May Change, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Violence, eventually, healthy relationship despite unhealthy relationship dynamics, immediate hurt and eventual comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 10:24:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Harry's life isn't easy. He's an emancipated minor whose main concern lately has been scraping together the fee to test out of high school. But when he presents as an omega things get much more complicated, fast.





	1. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU to Miraculous for beta reading.
> 
> I'm sorry to be starting yet another WIP, but I'm also not sorry because I'm really excited about this pairing and this AU.
> 
> Speaking of, I borrowed a lot of the Omega Verse elements from this fic, which has left such a strong impression on me: [Dear Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14520546/chapters/33548448) (Peter Parker/Tony Stark, MCU) 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter, and all subsequent chapters, will be in the chapter end notes if you want to check them for content that could make you uncomfortable, but they may contain spoilers.

Harry woke up on September thirtieth with a tingling sensation in the soles of his feet that made him think for a moment they’d fallen asleep.

But he wasn’t lying in a strange position and he wasn’t tangled in his sheets. A lapse in circulation didn’t make any sense. So he pulled the blanket back and reached down to cup them in the palms of his hands, unseeing in the dark space. They felt like a normal temperature on the outside, and he didn’t feel the pins-and-needles sensation when he massaged them. Just that steady, prickling heat, like he’d dipped them in very warm water.

Strange, but nothing too alarming. He checked the little battery-powered alarm clock sitting on top of his backpack and frowned. It was almost time to get up, anyway, so he gave up on getting more sleep. The bulb by the stairs had burned so Harry dressed by feel. Then he wadded up his blanket and set it aside, making sure everything else was in his backpack. He liked to keep most of his stuff with him.

Harry crawled down the ladder that led down into the cramped office. No one was in the little room, but the light was on as though Fletcher had already come in.

Harry went out into the garage with his hands buried in the middle pocket of the hooded sweatshirt he’d been sleeping in. The last few mornings already felt sharp and cold, like the seasons were skipping past fall and going straight into winter. The thought made him shudder. He wouldn’t be able to stay in the shop much longer if this kept up. In a few more weeks he’d have to start going to the shelter.

“Hey Harry,” said the boss, voice muffled. He must have heard Harry come into the main part of the building, which they called the shop, but was no more than a narrow single-car garage. “Hand me that, will you?”

Fletcher’s upper half was slid under a bike, a big one with two rear wheels and a sidecar. It was neat, a vintage model, but whoever owned it wasn’t taking particularly good care of it. Harry hated to see that, not that it was unusual. The shop didn’t have a lot of attributes to attract a high-end clientele.

But there weren’t many places that specialized in bikes, so occasionally they did get to see something cool. Harry didn’t mind one way or the other, except that the more low-end the machine the more he worried whoever brought it in would skip out on their bill somehow, and that increased the likelihood Fletcher would “have to hold onto” one of Harry’s paychecks to make up for it.

It was worse when he was staying in the loft. Then Fletcher had some idea that letting him crash in the uninsulated crawlspace amounted to room and board. For the most part Harry didn’t mind, since looking for places to stay every night did consume a lot of time and energy.

But since early spring, it had been going pretty well. Harry stayed in the loft, business hadn’t been bad, and usually he was paid on time and in the proper amount. If only it wasn’t already getting so cold, Harry might have even managed to save up more than a couple hundred bucks. As it was, he got hungry too easily, the problem with being sixteen and filling out at last. And now that it was cooling off, he’d caved and bought a few long-sleeve shirts to layer under his trusty sweatshirt.

Harry grabbed the wheel Fletcher was pointing at and rolled it over, noticing the tire was one of the ones off their used inventory pile in the back, and not one of the best ones. It wasn’t quite bald, but showing signs of dry-rot. Harry grimaced but didn’t comment while the boss maneuvered the wheel into place and began resecuring it.

“So, it’s still gonna be a slow morning?” Harry asked casually. He fidgeted a little where he stood, grimacing. He’d slipped on his socks and tennis shoes before he came down, but it hadn’t done anything for the feeling in his feet. If anything it was worse.

Fletcher didn’t emerge from under the bike, but Harry knew he’d heard him because he grunted, like he already knew Harry was angling to take off and didn’t like it. “Why you asking?” 

“Well,” Harry said slowly, “if you don’t need me, I’m going to go to that class.” 

“Class?” 

“That GRE class,” Harry said. “You know, at the high school.” 

“It’s Saturday. They have classes on Saturdays?” 

“They do for the GRE,” Harry said. He didn’t add that they obviously couldn’t have a GRE class at the high school on a weekday. He didn’t want the boss to decide he was being condescending. That never ended well.

Harry had been working at the shop since he was thirteen. The Dursleys had sent him originally, because Vernon knew a guy who knew the shop owner and said he’d hire a kid, even an underage kid. And he was still there after his emancipation at fifteen because he was still underage and because he liked the work. After he’d reached a legal working age a couple months ago, he’d stayed because he could sleep in the loft, which was a huge benefit even if the boss sometimes cut his checks.

And a part of what kept Harry there was his aversion to change. Shitty as it was most of the time, the shop was familiar. He knew what to expect from Fletcher, the good and the bad. And Fletcher was a beta, which meant that the environment was generally low-key. Harry didn’t have a social network — he didn’t have an alpha friend looking out for him or a few betas to comfort him. He was vulnerable to spikes in the energy of a place, and a lot of the other mechanics in the neighborhood were alphas. Working on machines seemed to draw a certain type, he’d found. Maybe once he presented he wouldn’t be so sensitive, but for now he couldn’t have stomached it. 

“Go, I guess,” the boss said, and Harry tried not to run out of the shop. He knew better than to hang around; sometimes Fletcher had a quick change of heart..

It was colder outside, of course, so Harry hunched his shoulders and tugged up the hood on his sweatshirt before hastily sticking his hands back in the pocket, bunching up the fabric inside so he could double it over his fists. The sweatshirt was oversized enough that he could manipulate it a lot without hiking it up too far. He looked down at his feet so the wind curling down the sidewalk would hit the top of his head instead of his face. He needed to reinforce the toe of his left tennis shoe with a little bit of tape, but he wasn’t sure he could swipe any of the black electrical tape without the boss complaining. He had a roll of plain silver duct tape in his stuff, but the color would be so much more obvious.

Harry didn’t really care what people thought of him, but the times it was the hardest to shrug off the looks and whispers were the days he was around other kids his age. Somehow the pitying looks from adults didn’t bother him as much as the sneers from other teenagers.

The school was eight blocks, and Harry walked fast enough that it didn’t take long. Still, he was cold and his stomach was growling by the time he got there. There was a sign at the front entrance, a few people wandering in, and a girl propping open the door. She had a lot of tight curls and pretty, dusky skin.

“Hi, welcome,” she said to Harry. He smiled awkwardly back at her. She was wearing a button-down shirt with a crisp collar, tucked into a high-waisted wool skirt, fuzzy grey tights and flat-soled leather boots. He wasn’t used to seeing people who were both put-together and...prim.

“We’re in the auditorium,” she told him, with an especially kind smile that told him she’d noticed how ratty he looked even if she hadn’t outright stared. It made him want to grimace, but he held onto his strained smile instead and just tried to move by as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, though the auditorium wasn’t far and there weren’t __that__ many people in line, the double doors to the auditorium were only open on one side, forcing everyone to go single-file and creating a bit of a bottle-neck.

So, Harry was stuck in the doorway another moment. It was a moment too long to pass in polite silence, so the girl said, “Are you from this neighborhood?” 

“Sorta,” Harry said. “I work down the street.” He tilted his head north toward the shop. She looked intrigued. It was an unfamiliar reaction.

“Do you work full time?” 

Harry nodded. 

“That’s so impressive. I can’t even find time for a part-time job!” 

Harry’s smile was really more of an expression of pain at this point, but the girl didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m really interested to know the backstory of everyone in the group,” she went on, looking thoughtful. The people ahead of him finally moved and Harry followed closely, relieved. But he wasn’t going to evade her so easily; the girl closed the door behind them and followed him. “Maybe we could do a poll! Like, as an ice breaker.” 

“Yeah, Granger, that would be swell, let’s interrogate them,” said the smooth voice of another teenager. Harry glanced over at a boy with sleek, slightly-too-long platinum blond hair in an artful cut. He wore the kind of clothes that were deceptively simple but unmistakably expensive, even though the outfit boiled down to just a black t-shirt and jeans. He was looking Harry over unabashedly from head to toe, a wrinkle in the bridge of his thin, patrician nose. “It’s not kind to make people dwell on their disadvantages,” he added to the girl, and walked off ahead of them with long strides, skirting the line to let himself through the closed half of the double doors.

“He’s probably right,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m not always good at predicting what will play well with a crowd.”

Harry tried to smile understandingly, but then practically ran into the auditorium when it was finally his turn. Hermione hung back at the entrance.

The sight of a table with a box of donuts and a carton of coffee on it made Harry’s knees weak, but by the time he reached it there was only a single cake donut left. Still, it tasted like pure sugar — that is to say, heaven — and the coffee was the perfect almost-bitter contrast. Harry sank into a seat in the front row and hoped he’d be able to stay awake in the post-sugar-rush daze he knew would come over him within the hour.

The girl and the boy arranged themselves at the front of the room, the boy off in the corner looking bored, the girl with a fixed, earnest smile beside a small podium.

“I’m Hermione Granger, the President of the National Honors Society chapter for this district.” 

The boy was lounging against the wall, inspecting his fingernails as though he was paying no attention. But at Hermione’s statement, he cleared his throat meaningfully. 

“... _ _co-President__ of the National Honors Society,” the girl corrected. Then she looked pointedly at the boy, lips pursed. 

He waited a long moment and then said, without looking up, “I’m Draco Malfoy, __co-President,__ along with Granger, here. We’re thrilled to be spending our Saturday morning administering this class.”

Harry looked around. There were maybe twenty people sitting scattered in the auditorium seating. No one seemed particularly interested in what their hosts had to say. Harry was the youngest by at least a couple years. He figured he was about the same age as the two kids that were in charge. He got the notebook he’d bought for the occasion out of his bag and propped it on his knees, sucking on his forefinger down to the first knuckle to get every bit of glaze from the donut.

His feet felt even warmer than when he’d woken up, and the food tasted more intense than it should. Maybe he was getting sick? 

A few rows over, a man who had to be forty years old was watching Harry closely. Harry pretended not to notice, wondering what he’d done to get his attention. Harry was practically an expert at flying under the radar. Something about his attention, though, made Harry squirm. He felt an itch between his shoulder-blades that didn’t feel natural. Was this the day? Was he finally presenting, and if so, was this what being a beta felt like? He’d never heard anyone describe it quite like this.

Harry shook himself and dug out his pen. He didn’t have time to let his thoughts wander. The girl was starting to talk about the test format and all the logistics of taking it online, how and when the fee had to be paid, etcetera. Harry took thorough notes, especially on the dates and fees. He had much more pressing concerns than finally (officially) figuring out his secondary gender. It had to be beta at this point. If it was going to be alpha, he probably would have known by early puberty. If he was ever going to be disappointed by being ordinary, that time had passed. At this point he really just wanted to get his presentation over with. From what the betas he’d known had said, it wasn’t a big deal.

They’d never described anything like what Harry was feeling, either, but maybe he just hadn’t asked the right questions. It got harder and harder to pay attention to the lecture that Hermione and Draco were taking turns delivering. By the time they broke at the end of the first hour, Harry’s itch had become a full-body discomfort, like he was allergic to his shirt. He’d stripped out of his sweatshirt and had to fight the bizarre urge to take everything else off too. 

He fled to the bathroom to splash some water on his face. It was a room that hadn’t been updated for a few decades. Lots of cast iron and chunky stainless steel fixtures with most of the shine worn off. The faucet gurgled pensively for a few long moments before spitting out a trickle of water that smelled like rust, but ran clear. Harry hesitated only a moment, then bent his whole face into the sink, rubbing the cool water over the back of his neck, his cheeks, his forehead.

The smell was so strong, though, he almost gagged. It seemed laden with a chemical harshness he’d never noticed in the municipal water out of any other tap. He shut the water off and stayed bent over the sink, shivering.

He might have been there a minute or an hour, it was hard to say, but then the door opened with a low squeak that was unbearable in his ears. Harry jerked his head up and saw the man from the auditorium who had been watching him. His heavy body was framed in the bathroom doorway, his eyes fixed on Harry’s reflected face.

“How…?” the stranger asked nonsensically, his voice a rough whisper. He stepped further inside so the door fell closed behind him, then stalked slowly toward Harry. “You... _ _smell__ …”

Harry saw all the signs but couldn’t quite puzzle them out. A man who reeked of alpha, coming toward him with his nostrils flared, pupils dilated so far his eyes looked eerily black.

__

__He reeked of alpha__ , but it wasn’t an odor. It was something else, something Harry hadn’t perceived before but which now resonated in him deeply. It was instantly recognizable; a bone-deep recognition. Instinct.

The alpha stepped right up into Harry’s space and pressed his front up against Harry’s back. Harry was too shocked to react beyond a quick, horrified gasp, and by then the alpha had set his teeth against the side of his neck and Harry’s vision dimmed. His muscles went lax like his body was a simple mechanism and someone had flipped its switch.

The alpha withdrew just enough to mutter against Harry’s ear, “That’s it, you little slut. Wanted an alpha to find you, did you? Too smelly and poor to keep one of your own? Well, I’m not choosy about my bitch, so long as he’s in heat.”

The words echoed twice in Harry’s sluggish thoughts before he understood them, and when he did, the shock and revulsion were so strong it threw him out of the dizzying headspace he’d fallen into.

Harry drove his elbow into the alpha’s soft stomach so he staggered back, and when that gained Harry enough space to move, he shot out from between the sink and the looming alpha. The alpha who’d quickly recovered from Harry’s glancing blow and begun to growl. 

Harry’s thoughts spiraled into a confusing tangle of __alpha challenge FEAR angry bite WANT__ —

He’d felt it flood his body, wave after wave of endorphins from the gland in his neck. The gland they called “the spot” when speaking crudely of omegas. 

He put his arms up over his face and angled his body away, the physical side effect of the new, foreign yet blindingly intense instincts which were panicking at the thought he’d challenged an alpha and __despairing__ that there was no longer an alpha mouthing his neck.

It was a blur of emotion, compounded by the terrible, shrunken-skin feeling and the heat that wouldn’t stop...

The heat. Of course. That’s how omegas presented: they had their first heat. Harry was an omega — worse, an omega in heat. __Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.__

Harry was alone, in the first wave of a heat he had no power to regulate, with an adult alpha he’d just provoked. There was only one way this was going to end.

Even knowing that, Harry dodged the alpha’s advance. The alpha’s long arms were reaching straight for Harry’s neck. His throat was corded around a looping growl that made Harry’s vision tunnel. He’d always been quick, but the omega’s urge to roll over for the alpha was slowing his response time, and when he tried to rush for the door he wasn’t fast enough.

The alpha snagged him around the waist and used the momentum of his body to swing him up against the wall so hard and fast Harry’s head struck the tile with a sound that reverberated off the walls.

The alpha wrapped his hands around Harry’s throat and dug his thumb into the spot with much more force than the hair-trigger gland required. Harry’s legs gave out at once.

The alpha held him against the wall, his thigh between Harry’s and hands still tight on Harry’s throat so it was difficult to breathe. The alpha thrust clumsily, frantically into Harry; he was rock hard against Harry’s stomach. He thought, dully, that there was no way this wouldn’t hurt, and badly.

And then Harry’s persistently bad luck shifted a little, and he got lucky.

The door banged open again and this time two people rushed through. Harry couldn’t make out any details. He was nearly unconscious, between the throbbing in his head and the burning in his lungs as the alpha held his throat far too tightly. But he thought he noticed that girl’s—Hermione’s—springy curls.

The alpha, sensing a threat, tightened his grip on Harry possessively, and the sputtering flame that was Harry’s hold on reality winked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Harry is sexually assaulted by a stranger. They're interrupted before it can escalate to rape.
> 
> The next chapter will be up July 7 and I'd really, really love to hear your thoughts on the first installment. <3


	2. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day early, I couldn’t wait! I hope you enjoy.
> 
> More thanks to Miraculous for beta reading. ❤️
> 
> Warnings at the end note.

When he woke up, Harry was in a clinic.

He had gone to one with Seamus once, when he needed to walk his older sister home after her heat. He remembered how tense Seamus had been, how unlike his affable self, and how his sister, Fiona, had refused to look up the whole sixteen blocks.

At the time he’d been a kid, insensitive to the smell of chemical solvents intended to eradicate the scent markings of alphas and omegas, and also to confuse the senses a bit, so new scents were harder to make out. 

Still, Harry remembered the smell and the cinderblock walls. They were all built the same way, part of one push three administrations ago for omega rights. A push that had no sustaining political will during all the subsequent years, which were most of Harry’s life. 

The clinics showed it: they needed paint and basic maintenance, that was obvious to anyone passing by. Now that he was inside one himself, he saw it wasn’t just their exteriors that were rundown. There were four beds in the room besides Harry’s, and the once-white sheets were clean, but stained and speckled with holes around the seams. The only other furnishings were two metal folding chairs. There was a crack in the window someone had repaired with duct tape and a bit of plastic sheeting, which rattled to signal a draft.

In one of the beds across the room, there sat a blond girl with luminous eyes. “You’re awake,” she said rhetorically. Harry sniffed automatically, surprising himself. Just as he had in the bathroom, he recognized the scent he took in at once. But where the alpha’s had agitated, this scent soothed.

“You’re omega,” Harry blurted, then blushed. Of course she was. She was sitting in an omega clinic wearing a faded set of blue scrubs. She didn’t look like someone who was just there to hand out pamphlets or walk a friend home.

“Yes,” she agreed with a faint smile. “And so are you. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, my name’s Luna.”

Harry rubbed his neck, then winced when his palm grazed the spot, feeling the tingle of the bite and with it, a flash of memories that made him feel vaguely sick again. He cleared his throat. “I’m Harry.”

“Are you all right?” she asked, matter-of-fact but kind. For some reason, even though she was a stranger, Harry felt very comfortable with her. He’d heard omegas had a tendency to connect with one another but it wasn’t something he’d ever heard discussed in detail.

In fact, Harry didn’t know anything about omegas, except that up until twenty years ago they weren’t allowed to walk down the street off a leash.

The look on his face made Luna slide out of her bed and pad over on silent bare feet. She was quick. She stroked Harry’s hair and made a low shushing noise.

“You should put your head between your knees til it passes,” was her advice, calm as anything. Harry did, and she stroked his back until the urge to throw up passed.

Luna perched on the edge of the bed when Harry finally straightened up, smiling at her with shy gratitude.

“They gave you a suppressant shot while you were asleep. You’ll feel a lot better by tonight.”

Harry laid back tiredly, hoping that she would stay close and trying not to feel ashamed by how much comfort he was taking from a stranger. “You’re really nice.”

She looked surprised for a moment. “I’m not that nice,” she said after a pause. “I just…” she shrugged. “Omegas have to stick together.” She patted Harry’s arm. The friendly contact made him feel pleasantly warm all over, a much better version of the itchy heat that had begun that morning.

He didn’t react—as far as he knew—but Luna seemed to understand what the casual touch did for him, because her hand lingered half-weightless for several long moments before she pulled it back.

“You should get some rest,” was her advice. “I’ll come find you later.” She slipped out and left him alone in the room steeped in the smell of chemicals. But it was quiet and safer than anywhere else Harry had to go. Somehow that was enough, and before long he found himself drifting off.

<hr>

Harry’s heat peaked at some point in the bathroom, he realized later, which meant by that evening he was though the worst of it. He couldn’t think about the bathroom without throwing this new part of him he thought of as  _ the omega _ into a fit of confusion, so he carefully avoided it. He distracted himself by listening to the volunteer doctors at the clinic go through their terse monologues all afternoon and even skimming through a few of the stack of pamphlets he’d accumulated.

That night, Harry ate in the cafeteria with Luna. They were joined at the round metal table by two other girls, twins named Naomi and Sylvia. They had coffee-colored skin and lovely dark eyes, but there was something in their silence that was more strained than Luna’s quietness. Like something haunted them and was never far from their thoughts.

Harry couldn’t say the clinic wasn’t depressing, but he was still sorry to get politely turned back out onto the street the next morning. He could hardly object. The other two beds in his and Luna’s room had filled up the night before, and when he left through the lobby there were six people waiting to check in.

Luna walked out with him. He could tell from her regular clothes that she didn’t have it totally easy, but she probably had it a little easier than Harry. That was confirmed when he saw someone who had to be her father waiting for her in a little battered Toyota sedan by the curb.

“Do you need a ride, Harry?” she asked, then paused and smiled, looking over his shoulder. “Oh, good. You have your walk home covered. See you.” And she was gone.

Harry tried not to feel  _ too  _ disappointed. What had he expected, a pen pal? He didn’t even have a phone, so exchanging numbers would have been pointless. Still, he kind of wish Luna had wanted to.

He worked through her strange parting words a second later, and turned apprehensively to look for whomever she’d mistakenly assumed was waiting for Harry. He had the brief, hysterical thought his boss would be there, ranting about Harry missing a whole afternoon at work without notice and telling him he didn’t need to bother coming back — but of course his pot-bellied employer wasn’t there.

Still, it was almost as much of a shock to see the girl from the GRE class. Hermione Granger.

There was a tall, awkward-looking redhead with her, but they were upwind and Harry couldn’t catch their scents, so he avoided eye contact just in case. The kid was big, and he was hanging around outside an omega clinic without getting too distracted so he was probably a beta, but Harry’s omega couldn’t be sure.

Harry wanted to look down and hunch his shoulders as he walked slowly toward them, but he made himself straighten up and lift his chin instead. It was strange, his head and his body battling like that. By the time he was within earshot and scenting distance, he was sure: betas, both of them.

“How are you feeling?” Hermione asked earnestly. She wore a different version of the outfit from the day before, an immaculate white Oxford shirt and a black a-line skirt. There was a clear, dark bruise on her right cheek. Harry blinked at her.

“I’m fine. Are you…” Harry gestured toward her face and winced. “Is that from…?”   
  
She was looking at the bruises on Harry’s neck with a grim expression. “It’s fine,” she said dismissively. 

“This is Ron,” she added belatedly, tilting her head toward her companion. He smiled warmly and half-waved at Harry.

“Hi. Hermione told me what happened. Hope that’s okay. We’d like to walk you home?”

Harry sighed, but he was hardly in a position to turn them down. Still, he didn’t exactly know where “home” was for now. He hoped that he could slip into the garage without the boss noticing him, but he thought a confrontation was almost inevitable. Harry’s heat was fading fast. He shouldn’t be in much danger unless an alpha was in scenting distance. The clinic had even washed his clothes with some sort of industrial soap that Harry thought would act as alpha repellant in and of itself.

But when he remembered the alpha in the bathroom, and that confusing and totally unfamiliar desire to let him do whatever he wanted to Harry, he shuddered and nodded.

“Okay. Thanks.”

They started walking, not saying anything else. Harry knew he probably owed the girl — Hermione — more than a mere “thanks.” He should tell her how sincerely grateful he was, how he realized that while he might still be alive even had she not intervened, he probably wouldn’t be walking very well and he could even be — the thought made Harry tremble —  _ pregnant _ . Now  _ there _ was something Harry’d assumed he’d never have to worry about.

“So Hermione says you work around here,” said Ron. “What do you do?”

“Oh, I’m like an assistant? To a mechanic.”

Ron looked genuinely impressed. “Like, a mechanic for cars?”

Harry nodded. “Some. Motorcycles, mostly.”

Ron’s face lit up. “Seriously? That’s so fucking cool. Isn’t that cool, Hermione?”   


“It’s very interesting,” Hermione said with a strained smile.

“God, I wish I could work at a job like that instead of going to school all day. But how...I mean, how do you keep from having to go to school?” Ron blushed. “Or, I mean, how did you  _ before _ ?”

Because, even if Harry wanted to enroll in high school again, he wouldn’t be allowed as an omega. For some reason the thought made him ill, though it likely had no actual impact on him. Going to school hadn’t been possible while he was with the Dursleys, and wasn’t practical after he left them. But his social worker who’d helped him through the emancipation process  _ had _ insisted Harry prepare for the GRE.

Harry wondered for a moment if he should call Tonks. He was pretty worried about her finding out he was technically homeless. He didn’t want to have to explain why in court and he had a bad feeling about what the judge would say if he did. But Tonks seemed to get the reality of Harry’s circumstances, and though she couldn’t officially condone it, he thought she understood that there were worse things than sleeping rough.

Then again, the way people acted when they thought you would present beta was probably different than how they acted when they knew you were an omega.

Harry couldn’t shake that thought as they got closer and closer to the shop. What was his boss going to say? He wondered briefly if Harry could keep it from him, but dropped that idea quickly. There was no way. They worked in close quarters. And while betas weren’t affected by a neutral omega scent, they definitely  _ noticed  _ it. Fletcher wouldn’t like the stigma. All he cared about was his little business and he’d know that some customers wouldn’t like it. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, but Harry knew plenty of people thought omegas shouldn’t work, for myriad reasons ranging from “they’re too precious and should be kept safe with their alphas at all times” to “they’re simple creatures who only understand how to lie still for a fucking or take care of babies.”

Harry was beginning to feel nauseous again, but he didn’t know what to do except keep walking and try to keep up a brave face. Ron and Hermione seemed nice enough, and he didn’t want to freak them out by having a breakdown in the middle of the sidewalk, no matter how badly the omega wanted to drop to its knees and cry.

God, Harry hated this. He didn’t feel like himself at all. The omega was a hostile force, something parasitic that had nothing to do with him and yet, somehow, defined him now.

“I was thinking,” Hermione said, her voice high, “that if you wanted, we could go to the police station with you to make a report.”

Harry frowned at her. “What?”   
  
She blushed a little, which made her skin splotchy on the bruised side of her face. “To report that alpha. For what he did.”

Harry turned to face forward and kept walking. It was a warmer morning than usual, not that he had room in his head to be relieved. He realized distantly it was October now. Harry had presented as an omega and the morning was warm, and people were going about their lives all around him like nothing was out of the ordinary. Except that Harry was used to being mostly invisible, and now everyone they passed who was walking into the southerly breeze gave Harry a second, sharp look, as though they couldn’t help themselves.

“Nothing happened,” Harry said bluntly, then he realized he wasn’t sure about that. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides and stopped, turning to face Hermione. “Did it?” He thought he would know, but then, maybe not. By the time he’d woken up in the clinic all he could remember was losing consciousness against the wall. That and mapping his bruises led him to the conclusion things hadn’t gone further, but...

She seemed startled by the sudden eye contact. Her gaze skated to the side. “He grabbed you. He bit you. That’s not allowed, not without your consent.”

“I was out in public in the middle of a heat,” Harry reminded her, incredulous. He glanced at Ron, sure there couldn’t be two people in the world as naive as Hermione was being. Ron’s frown was steady and his expression gave away nothing but concern. “No one would think he was in the wrong.”

Hermione’s lips pressed into a thin line. “ _ I _ don’t think it was justified.  _ I _ think it was completely wrong, and criminal. It was assault. An alpha doesn’t lose all his agency just because he scents an omega in heat. And they — alphas like that — they think they can do whatever they want…”

“I’m not interested in making a report,” Harry said bluntly. “And I think I’ve got the walk home handled from here, thanks.” He started walking as fast as he could.

He heard footfalls coming up behind him and panic gripped him, but he forced himself not to react, even as he looked nervously out of the corner of his eye at the person falling into step beside him. Just Ron. A clean-smelling beta with no interest in Harry’s heat and a lot of interest in his discomfort. He reminded Harry a bit of Tonks. She’d been one of those peace-keeping sort of betas, too, made anxious by any person in distress.

“I know you probably don’t need to be walked, but there’s no reason to take a chance,” Ron said firmly. “We don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to.”

Harry gritted his teeth. He definitely didn’t want to talk. But Ron kept his word and didn’t ask a single question as they walked down the crumbling sidewalk, closer to a much rougher neighborhood. Harry wondered, looking at Hermione’s relatively high-end ensemble and leather messenger bag, and Ron’s tennis shoes, vibrantly white in that brand-new way, if maybe someone needed to be walking  _ them _ home.

When they got to the end of the block with the shop on it, Harry stopped again and squinted up at Ron. “I can get the rest of the way there on my own.” Hermione was hanging behind, but she seemed to get the gist of it too, cupping her elbows in her hands, half-hugging herself.

Ron was frowning past him, probably looking for the house he assumed Harry lived in. 

“I stay at the shop,” he explained, wondering if he’d soon regret it. Ron seemed surprised, but he recovered quickly.

“That’s cool! Not with the parents all the time, that seems like a great plan. But, Harry, I don’t think staying at the, um, shop — and alone — is a good idea for another day or so. And you don’t have…” Ron looked helplessly at Harry’s neck. He meant to say Harry didn’t have a bite, but of course, he did. Not that it mattered. The alpha from the bathroom was hardly hanging around to protect his claim, thank God. If Harry ever saw him again, Harry wasn’t going to let him anywhere close. Well, maybe just in range, and only for long enough Harry could kick him right in the balls.

Harry saw that there was a bike getting unloaded from a trailer in front of the shop. It was big, black and old. The perfect distraction. And the trailer and truck hauling it looked nice, which meant that the boss would be in a decent mood.

“I’ll be alright,” he assured Ron. He hesitated, about to walk off, then turned to Hermione. “And thanks. For, um, the bathroom.” He lifted a hand, but dropped it instead of touching his neck. If he felt the spot, he’d only make himself feel worse. “And for taking me to the clinic. That was really nice, and you didn’t have to do it.”

Hermione’s eyes were wide, and she looked like she had no idea what to say. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then managed a small nod.

Harry jogged down the sidewalk away from them, desperately hoping they wouldn’t try to follow.

They didn’t. When he glanced back, they were slowly walking in the opposite direction, turned slightly toward one another like they were talking. Harry assumed it was about him, and wondered why they cared so much, or at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though nothing bad happens to Harry in this chapter, he does reflect on the incident with the alpha stranger and what could have happened if they weren’t interrupted. It isn’t graphic but it’s mentioned in case that’s something you need to avoid or prepare yourself for.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Your comments give me wings! 😘 Next update on July 14!


	3. Sirius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Sirius POV at last! I've been so excited to post this.
> 
> Thank you guys for your comments and kudos. It's a little ship but I love you each for sailing it with me.

Sirius, freshly liberated, stood outside Azkaban, shivering in a white AC/DC t-shirt and black jeans. He hadn’t worn the clothes in thirteen years, but somehow everything fit fine. He’d lost a bit of baby fat in prison but he’d made up for it with daily workouts, and when he shrugged into the familiar clothes he felt like he’d traveled in time. He remembered the way the secured doors had sounded the first time they slid into place and locked behind him when he’d checked in after the verdict. How he’d stripped slowly out of the simple clothes he’d worn in and slipped into the coarse shirt and drawstring bottoms, faded navy blue. He remembered the way his stomach was in knots but how he’d combatted the urge to snarl at the guards steering him toward his cell insisting to himself that everything would be put right. That he’d be let out in no time. 

In the end, “no time” was thirteen years and forty-one days, yet here he was, smoothing his hands down the front of the soft cotton of his shirt like no time had passed. Funny how so many years could evaporate in an instant. Human brains were funny machines.

It was cold, standing on the narrow sidewalk outside the gates in just a t-shirt. Sirius had gotten back one of his favorite old jackets, too, the black denim with the hole in the right hip pocket. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to put it on, only turn it over in his hands, feeling the familiar loose stitch in the left sleeve, the thick round buttons on the pockets and, to his amusement, the slender shape of a single joint. He remembered stuffing it in the pocket with the hole in it, and it had worked its way into the lining, irretrievable.

Mr. Kreach was late, of course. He probably still hated Sirius, even though he’d inexplicably agreed to stay on and take care of the house even after Walburga finally kicked it. It was probably worth it to the infatuated little asshole to spend his days straightening up “Mistress’” favorite rooms and lovingly polishing the frame of her portrait.

At exactly fifteen minutes past the hour, Sirius heard the low hum of a good engine, and looked up to see his mother’s classic Aston Martin rounding the driveway. It was a funny contrast, the car, glossy black from a fresh wax and with every bit of chrome sparkling, navigating a road pockmarked by shallow potholes and hemmed by a crumbling curb.

Sirius glanced over his shoulder at the hulking shape of the prison with satisfaction.

 _Good fucking riddance_ , he thought. And then a chiding voice followed up a moment later, _unless they send you straight back_.

He snorted to himself. Let them try. He’d sooner drive his mother’s Aston Martin off a bridge. In fact, he had half a mind to do that one way or the other.

Mr. Kreach stopped the car and took his time getting out. He met Sirius’ eye over the hood, pausing with one hand braced against the roof like he was considering getting right back in and driving away.

He looked exactly the same. Which was to say, ancient and grizzled to the point of sickliness, with thin, lank grey hair in a careful combover and small eyes surrounded by folds of loose, wrinkled skin that made them seem smaller still. Yet they bored into Sirius over his hooked nose. His three-piece suit, though, was perfect, from his starched white collar to the polish on his leather shoes, which Sirius studied when Mr. Kreach finally closed his door, rounded the front of the car and opened the rear passenger door for Sirius.

“Master Black,” he said in the nasal, clipped voice that Sirius was sure he was never going to forget. He never thought he’d experience fond nostalgia over seeing his mother’s devoted servant. But compared to Azkaban, his childhood memories were practically pleasant.

“Hey, Kreacher,” Sirius said cheerfully, strolling over with his hands in his jeans pockets and his jacket slung over his shoulder. “Miss me?”

*

The house was the same. It would have been creepy, if Sirius hadn’t been expecting it. Mr. Kreach wouldn’t change a thing unless the will had left strict and detailed instructions, so the house was like a shrine to the horrible woman who had died there.

Number 12 was also objectively beautiful. An achievement in craftsman-style architecture, with soaring coffered ceilings and elegant wood paneling, large windows and generous rooms. University students used to come from states away for tours in the summer, particularly drawn by its original, intact conservatory off the drawing room.

Sirius’ mother had loved to impress, so she had painstakingly collected a combination of period-appropriate furniture and antiques, as well as a range of artwork that even elite collectors envied. Anyone could appreciate the effect of Walburga’s lifetime of curating the house, and Sirius was no exception. He walked around feeling like she was still alive in every room, and it made his skin crawl.

At least leaving Mr. Kreach in charge of maintaining the house exactly as Walburga had left it meant that nothing in Sirius’ rooms had changed, either.

He took the back staircase the way he used to when he still lived there. It wound up from the kitchen to the strange, dark hallway by the library that felt like a secret passageway. The third flight was so steep and narrow it had always felt like climbing a ladder. The third floor was a half story, a single large room that was intended to be the ballroom in the original build, but that kind of entertaining had fallen out of fashion by the time his mother inherited the house. So she’d closed off the main story to put in a better bathroom and closet in the second-level master suite, and when she finally decided to keep Sirius out of sight, she’d banished him to the forgotten third floor.

Of course, Sirius had been delighted. He looked around with a half-smile, remembering how he’d delighted in painting the walls an edgy charcoal, and stenciling diagrams of every major spacecraft from Star Trek on the ceilings. As far as he knew, she’d never been up there, though once or twice she’d sent Mr. Kreach to ransack the place looking for anything incriminating. He’d never found much.

Mr. Kreach had draped all the furniture, so Sirius went around uncovering things, feeling closer and closer to seventeen every time he pulled off another sheet. The last one he balled up and tossed aside cake off his bed, stripped of course, his old linens probably washed then discarded sometime in the past twenty years. Sirius had packed lightly and in a hurry on that last day, and there were still a few small items strewn over his desk. The top drawer was empty but half-open. His dresser drawers were all pulled out like lolling tongues. He was surprised Mr. Kreach had been able to resist the urge to tidy up, but probably all Walburga had asked was that he close up the room, and he’d likely wanted to get that over with as quickly as possible.

Sirius found himself looking toward the big window with the arched transom that faced the backyard, but as soon as he caught himself he looked away. There were some aspects of his past he wasn’t willing to relive.

In fact, being up here suddenly made him anxious. He dropped the last sheet and went back to the stairs, in such a rush his foot almost slipping off the first step. He breathed a little easier when he got to the second-floor landing, but his heart was still pounding. So instead of taking the last stretch of stairs, he put his shoulder hard against the sticky Murphy door concealed from inside the library as a bookcase. It gave after a moment and Sirius burst into the dim room, panting.

If the rest of the house was a shrine to Walburga, then this room was a shrine to her husband. Sirius looked around with a frown, his heartbeat slowing even as a different brand of unease stole over him. He didn’t miss Orion, exactly. It was all much more complicated than that. He sat down in the padded leather chair behind the desk that had belonged to a dozen of his ancestors, and studied the fine pen on its carved stand, set there for display. 

He didn’t have to open the drawers or inspect the shelves to know that all of his father’s personal things were gone. He’d never known how his mother had felt about Orion, but she’d taken care to pack away all his personal papers and small possessions directly after his death. Sirius had been indignant at the time, but a part of him had also been unsure about learning too much about his father. He’d always had a feeling that if he penetrated Orion’s careful facade, he might not like what he found.

And now it was too late. Wherever Walburga had locked things away, the knowledge was probably buried with her.

Sirius swiveled the chair back and forth, leaning his head back with a sigh. The curtains were drawn in the room, which didn’t make sense. They were always closed in the rooms no one used. Or had Mr. Kreach somehow anticipated that this was where Sirius would go?

He chuckled at the bizarre thought of Mr. Kreach trying to anticipate Sirius’ needs. Is that what would happen? Sirius thought it was significantly more likely that Mr. Kreach would give his two weeks’ notice any day now. 

A phone rang somewhere in the house, surprising Sirius into sitting straight up. The old rotary-style phone that had been on the desk as long as Sirius could recall hadn’t made a noise, but someone must be calling another line. It rang again, but not a third time, signaling someone had picked it up.

When Sirius lived at home, his father had liked to answer the phone himself, and Mr. Kreach took messages when no one was around. But the only person anyone would be calling now, Sirius assumed, was Sirius himself. For some reason the thought felt strange. He was never going to think of this house as his. 

Mr. Kreach materialized in the library doorway like a dark specter, holding a cordless phone in one hand. With the other, he made a terse gesture from the phone to Sirius. 

“It’s for you, Master Black.”

“Yeah, I assumed,” Sirius said, leaning back again.

Mr. Kreach stared at him, his face shadowed but his eyes somehow still bright, as though lit from within. Lit by the raging fires of his hatred for Sirius, burning in his heart, Sirius assumed. 

“Are you available?” Mr. Kreach asked icily.

Sirius grinned and spread his arms. “What does it look like?”

Mr. Kreach just stared at him.

Sirius smiled and let his hands drop onto the arms of the chair. “Yeah, Kreacher. I’m available. Toss her here.” He held up his hands in catching formation. Mr. Kreach did not throw him the cordless phone, but instead pushed two buttons on it. The phone on the desk rang and Mr. Kreach stepped briskly back out of the room.

Sirius reached over and picked up the receiver. It was just as smooth and heavy as he remembered from playing with it as a kid.

“This is Sirius.” He should have asked Mr. Kreach who was calling, probably. But then again, there was really only one person to whom Sirius had given the house number.

“Hi, Sirius,” said his lawyer. “Get home okay?”

“Yep,” Sirius said, popping the ‘P’. “It’s exactly as warm and welcoming as I remembered it.”

She snorted. “Has to beat Azkaban.”

Sirius shrugged. “Six of one half a dozen of the other, as they say..”

She sighed, but he could hear the smile in it. At this point, they’d spent more time together than all the people Sirius had dated combined. And while it was obvious she wasn’t his biggest fan at the outset, she’d gone above and beyond to set right what she felt she’d had a hand in getting wrong the first time. At this point, Sirius respected the hell out of her and therefore tried to only use his boundless sarcasm to amuse, rather than infuriate her. 

“I thought I’d check in, but I don’t have any news yet. We’re still waiting on a hearing date, and we’re still working on the motion. Have you gotten any calls yet?”

“No. Just this one. No one else has my number.” Sirius frowned. “What kind of calls?”

“It doesn’t matter who you did or didn’t give your number. I’m talking about reporters. They have everyone’s number. And yours isn’t even that hard to find.”

Sirius was sure Walburga had kept it unlisted, but he supposed that to an enterprising journalist that wouldn’t be much of a hurdle. 

The stray thought hit him like an arrow in the heart — _is Remus still a reporter_?

“Sirus? I really don’t think you should give any comments, but don’t be rude either. I know we’ve discussed it before, but…”

“I’ve gotta go, darling,” he murmured into the receiver. “Hot shower, taken all alone, calling my name.”

He heard her tapping her fingernails against something. “Fine. All right. I’ll be in touch, and if you need me before that you know how to reach me.”

“Sure do. Bye.” Sirius slid the receiver back onto its cradle, where it settled with a final-sounding click.

With the curtains drawn, he could see straight out onto the street. There was a kid pedaling a tricycle, trailed by a woman pushing a stroller. He could hear their laughter from here. His hearing always got painfully sensitive right before a rut, but compared to all the heavy-metal, hard-surface acoustics of Azkaban, he felt like everything was calm and soft. That’s when it struck him again.

He was out. He could do as he liked. Linger in the silence for a week. Refuse to answer the door or the phone. Find his mother’s old revolver and use it to shoot up her shoe and suit collection. 

Or he could pull out his old bike and ride it until he ran out of road. But he didn’t really trust himself that far.

He’d kind of pulled the excuse of a shower randomly from the air, but it sounded good now, so he got himself out of the desk chair and went upstairs, using the central staircase. Unfortunately for Sirius, there was a final obstacle between the top stair and his access to one of the five excellent bathrooms on the second level. Mr. Kreach stood in the center of the open landing beside the Mahogany flower table, which was spilling over with white mums. They were Walburga’s favorite fall flower.

“Shall I contact a service for you, Master Black?” asked Mr. Kreach. He said it with impressive composure, considering he was asking if he needed to hire Sirius a prostitute.

Sirius snorted. “No.” He considered the doors to either side of Mr. Kreach. There was no way in hell he’d use his mother’s lavender bathtub, which left the guest bathroom with the utilitarian walk-in shower his father had preferred, Regulus’, which Sirius couldn’t think of without remembering the time Regulus had tried to save a doomed lobster by snatching it from the kitchen and putting it in the tub off his room, or the other guest bathroom, which he hadn’t seen in twenty years but assumed had the most recent upgrades. The answer was pretty obvious, really.

“The Basics company is very good,” Mr. Kreach went on. “I inquired yesterday, in case their reputation had changed since I last made arrangements with them. I was assured by a trustworthy source they remain the elite option. They have male omegas as well.”

Sirius’ patience was evaporating fast. “I don’t want you to call a service, Kreacher. I don’t want you to call anyone. I don’t want you to… to anticipate my needs, or think of me at all. In fact, I don’t really want to see or hear you at all if it can be helped. Starting now, if you fucking please.”

Sirius should get rid of him completely. Fire him if he wouldn’t quit. But then he’d have to find someone else to keep track of the house, the house he hated but had to keep. Sirius knew he should strike a match and watch it go up in flames from a comfortable lawn chair with a drink in hand. He’d daydreamed about it every day from age twelve to seventeen. But he wouldn’t.

The house had a hold on him. His parents did too, no less so now that they were six feet under. He’d learned that in prison: he thought he’d gotten away, for those brief illusory years, but he hadn’t. When they’d turned the key in the lock on him in Azkaban, he’d had thirteen long years to do little more than think. And he’d realized that you couldn’t disconnect the tree from its roots, not until you were ready to kill the tree.

And in the end, he hadn’t been any better than them. Maybe he was even worse.

Sirius had gone to prison for the wrong reasons, sure, but he’d deserved it just the same.


	4. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the feedback on the last chapter and I hope you enjoy this one too.

Harry had been right about Fletcher’s state of mind. He was furious with Harry, but relieved he was around to help with the bike. He anticipated a good bill for the work and a customer who’d be happy to pay it. Harry couldn’t help a few extra, curious looks for the scowling, scrawny, and ancient-looking man in the impeccable suit who watched them unload the bike and take it inside, then drove off faster than was wise on the rough side-street, the empty trailer rattling.

“What is this thing?” Harry asked, touching the bike’s fenders with reverence, almost forgetting the trials of the past day in his excitement. “It looks like a Bonneville, but there’s no branding. British, maybe?”

“Something from the midcentury,” Fletcher murmured. Then he remembered he was angry at Harry and fixed him with a beady look. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  
There it was, the question Harry still hadn’t figured out how to answer. He absolutely did  _ not _ want to tell Fletcher the truth, but he remembered how, even briefly thinking it through on his way from the clinic, it had been obvious he had no choice. His boss would find out, there was no avoiding it. Harry may as well find out now whether he was getting kicked to the curb.

“I had my first heat yesterday.”

Fletcher scoffed, but he didn’t look amused. “Pull my other leg,” he said humorlessly. But after he looked at Harry a moment and Harry did nothing but look back with all the patience he could muster, the boss dropped the grease rag he’d been holding and blinked like an owl.

“You’re serious.”   
  
Harry nodded, watching him cautiously.

Fletcher was a rotund man, not particularly tall, with a tight round belly that always strained the pearl-snap buttons of his denim uniform, skinny legs and overly-large feet, both of which he insisted were “left feet,” once going so far as to begin unlacing his boots to prove it to Harry.  _ It’s all in the toes _ he’d explained. He drank too much, too. But he paid Harry under the table. And Harry had never heard him say anything discriminatory toward omegas, had he?

“Well, kid,” he said eventually. “You could probably get a nice bunk with a service. Or one of those special shelters, there’s dozens of those.” He looked at Harry askance, and Harry knew he was shocked. He probably hadn’t even begun to think through what he’d say in a moment like this. Like Harry, he’d assumed Harry had to be beta. Male omegas were so rare, and almost exclusively ran in families. Harry —

— well, Harry hadn’t known his father, had he?

His Aunt and Uncle had a few unkind things to say about Harry’s dad, though, and if they could have included that he was a “freak,” as they generally referred to male omegas, they definitely would have. The Dursleys prided themselves on being as non-progressive as possible. They preferred either complete stasis or a decidedly backward trajectory. So if Harry’s dad had been an omega, could anything have kept Petunia and Vernon from rubbing that in Harry’s face?

“So you’re kicking me out?” Unthinking, Harry rubbed his neck and his boss’ eyes snapped to the relatively high and gathered neck of his sweatshirt, which covered it. Fortunately. Harry jerked his hand away self-consciously.

“Nah, kid, but you can’t sleep here,” Fletcher muttered.

“Same thing,” Harry shot back. Then he blinked. He usually wasn’t one for backtalk, and that was  _ before _ yesterday. He attributed it to nerves and tried to focus on the issue at hand. “If I can’t stay here, I want my check on time.”

Fletcher narrowed his eyes, but instead of backing down, he just shrugged. “Fine. Friday mornings.”

“Thursday nights,” Harry insisted. 

Fletcher grimaced, but still he said, “Fine.”   
  
Harry hadn’t expected to get his job’s version of special treatment the first time he divulged his omega status. In fact he’d expected the opposite. A little voice in the back of his head wondered if the thing with that strange alpha had set the wrong tone for how all of this was going to go, then he remembered the grim faces of everyone he’d met at the shelter, particularly the twin girls with shadows in their eyes, and swallowed.

He had a strange urge to thank Fletcher, but he resisted it. Fletcher didn’t deserve to be thanked for doing something that wouldn’t cost him anything. In fact, losing Harry would probably cost him more. Harry was pretty good at the work, better than most people Fletcher could get away with jerking around.

Harry decided he wouldn’t panic about needing to find a shelter until later, and let himself focus on the bike. 

It had the classic, simple lines and scale of an early prototype, but the craftsmanship and profile so closely mirrored a 50s or 60s Triumph Bonneville that Harry became increasingly convinced that’s what he was seeing. It hadn’t been run in years, per the owner’s agent who dropped it off, so it was in for a thorough servicing. Harry spent the morning disassembling and cleaning gellid oil from the engine.

As it turned out, he wasn’t the one who steered himself back into less pleasant thoughts. Hermione and Ron came back to do it instead.

Harry smelled them before he saw them,a shock he still wasn’t used to. He rubbed a hand over his face, realized he’d probably left it streaked with oil, and then was too irritable to care. Then he heard them, too. Or Hermione, anyway, talking to Fletcher in that way she’d first talked to Harry: a-mile-a-minute and about nothing relevant.

Harry wearily walked outside, even though it was too cool to be out in just his uniform.

“...a totally non-mechanical prosthesis?” Hermione was asking, looking interestedly down at Fletcher’s right leg. “I’ve heard those are much more comfortable, but it probably depends on whether you retained the articulation of the knee or…”   
  
“Potter,” Fletcher snapped, seeing Harry. “Your friends are here.” He stalked back into the shop without a word of farewell to Hermione and Ron.

Ron looked perturbed by Hermione’s choice of subject for idle conversation with Fletcher, but not particularly surprised. He’s been frowning uncomfortably at his shoes when Harry came out, but now he looked up with an absent smile.

Hermione seemed nonplussed by the reception she’d gotten, if she’d noticed the negative feedback at all. Harry felt a pang of sympathy for her, and strangely, envy too. He wished he had a thicker skin. Especially now.

“So you’re back,” Harry said after a moment of silence.

“We were just thinking,” Hermione said, then looked over at Ron and didn’t finish the sentence.

Ron blinked at her, then smiled at Harry again. “I asked my parents if you could stay with us a couple days, and they said yes.”   
  
Harry was pretty sure several of the pamphlets he’d been handed at the clinic warned of the dangers of trusting strangers, in light of his new “exceptionalism.” When he first saw it in the literature he’d skimmed at the clinic to pass the time, Harry laughed aloud. The word had appeared so often, though, it had started to sound less amusing and more like a sick joke.

“Ron’s family are really nice people,” Hermione was saying. “And his dad is an omega,” she added. At that, Ron frowned, but his expression cleared just as quickly and he fixed Harry with a look that was somewhere between apologetic and commiserating. Or maybe it was just a normal expression, and all the nuance Harry was sensing came from the haze of scents and hyper-awareness to body language that had been plaguing him since yesterday. He was struck again by the mortifying urge to cry. Fuck, this heat was really hell on Harry’s emotions. At least, he hoped it was only the heat. If this was how he was going to feel all the time, he didn’t know how he’d handle it.

Hermione was still looking at him with shining eyes. Harry looked back and forth between the two of them, baffled. He’d never liked being pitied. Not when he was only pitied for being an orphan, or a troublemaker, or a poor kid, or a homeless kid. Back then, if a couple of kids his age had shown up looking understanding and offered him a place to crash, he would have said no without hesitation. But now... 

It was probably because he was at the end of his emotional rope, and because after an entire day living in his new reality, he couldn’t maintain a state of total denial. Whatever the reason, he knew he would be an idiot to say no to Ron’s offer. He had barely been an omega an hour when he was attacked for the first time. He knew nothing about how to manage this new aspect of his already chaotic life. Harry’s shoulders slumped.

“Um, okay,” he muttered, staring at the ground. “Thanks.”

*

Harry couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong, but it was obviously something. Everything has seemed fine; they’d arrived at Ron’s in the late afternoon, Ron had gone to great lengths to keep Harry entertained and fed, and then he’d shuffled Harry into a guest room when Harry began yawning before nine pm.

Harry slept soundly (only a couple hazy nightmares, better than he’d expected) and poked his out of the door when he heard him moving around in the hallway between his own room and the shared bathroom.

Ron had set him up with a bowl of cereal at the kitchen island and Harry had been halfway through it when Ron’s dad came down.

He’d looked at Harry with an expression like he’d seen a ghost before he recovered, greeted Harry politely and asked to speak to Ron in the other room.

Harry might have thought he’d imagined Arthur’s initial reaction if an undeniable tension didn’t still seem to permeate the whole house.

When Ron and Arthur went off together, Harry had to force himself not to try to eavesdrop. Likely the only thing that saved him was the presence of Ron’s little sister, Ginny, who was smiling at him reassuringly from across the counter. She was a pretty girl who in some ways seemed older than her brother, even though she was a year younger.

“So, your first heat, huh?” she said, the first person who had brought up the subject without sounding sympathetic. “How do you feel?”

Harry looked at her, not sure what he was supposed to say. He felt fine, really. He’d had a pretty relaxing stay at the Weasleys’ sprawling ranch-style house. It had an open concept, lots of floor-to-ceiling windows and vaulted ceilings warmed by exposed wooden beams. The family had a caring but relaxed way with one another, or at least the members he’d met. Charlie was an artistic sort, grown up but only managing to move as far as the basement. He was a beta, like Ginny and Ron. 

Even Arthur gave an immediate impression of the quiet, self-conscious beta stereotype, with a sweet smile. And by his expressions captured by the multitude of family photographs strewn around the house, he obviously took deep pleasure being around his children. 

There were more Weasleys Harry was unlikely to ever meet. He’d seen them in the photos, too, and Ron had rattled off a few details about each of his absent siblings. The eldest, Bill, had the self-assured ease in every picture that branded him an alpha. Their mother and the source of the alpha gene, Molly, was apparently some important lawyer. Twins Fred and George were troublemakers, away at some kind of camp. Percy was an omega and Ron described him with a frown as “recently married” before quickly changing the subject.

Realizing he’d waited too long to answer Ginny’s question, Harry searched for something to say. “I feel…” he paused, giving it some sincere thought. “I don’t feel bad,” was what he settled for.

In a way, the omega was beginning to feel like it fit. Maybe it was just an accident of brain chemistry, or maybe the omega, which had felt like such an imposter at first, had wrestled Harry’s real personality and won. Either way he felt oddly at ease.

Ginny was watching him closely. When she nodded, he wondered how much of it was in response to what he’d said and how much was in response to the look on his face.

“That’s what I remember from when I presented,” was what she said. Harry wanted to scoff, thinking with longing that to present as a beta was something else entirely, but he wasn’t about to argue with the daughter of the omega whose house he’d slept in and whose cereal he was eating.

And anyway, maybe it wasn’t  _ so _ different. What did Harry know?

Ron and Arthur came back in, still scenting distress, and Harry stiffened in his chair. Arthur noticed at once and gave him a reassuring, fatherly smile that didn’t fool Harry. After all, now he had an omega’s senses.

“Harry, I need to talk to you, if that’s all right?” Arthur asked quietly, but Ron was already scooping up his cereal bowl, smiling at Harry and heading out of the room. Taking the cue, Ginny slid off the kitchen stool she was perched on, too.

“Okay,” Harry said cautiously, watching Arthur sit down.

“You know my wife is an attorney?” Arthur asked.

Harry nodded.

“Well, Ron would have had no reason to know this had anything to do with you when he invited you here. And I’m glad you’re here, too, Harry, but you need to know something—that is, my wife represents Sirius Black.” He sat stiffly, looking at Harry, like he was braced for Harry to throw a fit. Harry waited for more, but Arthur didn’t say anything else. Apparently,  _ this  _ was the serious news.

“That guy whose case — that bombing or whatever — just got overturned?” Harry didn’t really follow the news, but the story had been hard to miss. Even the radio kept mentioning it, and Fletcher only played music stations.

“Yes,” Arthur said, his forehead furrowed with confused concern. “And, he was—Harry, he was probably your parents’ closest friend.”

Harry swallowed. All he knew about his parents was that they’d died doing something illegal, and apparently his aunt and uncle were convinced they had poisonous genes.

“I didn’t know that,” he managed.

Arthur leaned forward, scenting comfort, and put a warm hand over Harry’s, stroking his wrist. “Your aunt and uncle raised you, isn’t that right?”

Harry huffed. “You could say that, I guess.” He’d never said something so scathing about them out loud. But then, it wasn’t a topic he’d had a lot of opportunities to discuss, even if he’d wanted to.

“Well, they had guardianship of you,” Arthur said. “When everything...happened...we wanted to reach out to them, but…” he sighed. “We had a lot going on at the time.” He didn’t elaborate, and Harry didn’t ask. “Occasionally Molly sent a letter, just to see how you were, but…”

“Wait,” Harry interrupted. “How did you know about me? Because of this Sirius Black? Or was your wife my parents’ lawyer too? I know they probably had one.”

Arthur looked confused. “Your parents? Harry, honey, no.” he kept rubbing soothing circles into Harry’s wrist. It embarrassed him how much he liked it. “Your parents were friends of ours. I knew your father through group and the clinic. We all lobbied together. They were amazing people.”

Harry jerked his hand away, surprising them both. “What?” he asked, suddenly breathless. “But they — they died in some kind of standoff with the police?” 

Arthur flinched. “Is that what you were told?” His voice sounded low and almost angry. He got his answer from the look on Harry’s face. “No, your parents weren’t killed by the police.”

Technically, the phrase that Harry remembered was  _ they got what they deserved for breaking the law _ . But now he wondered, had Petunia meant the natural law, a phrase thrown around a lot by people who wanted omegas back on the leash?

“Your parents were killed by a group of angry, bigoted, hateful people who felt empowered because of the politics at the time,” he murmured, looking at Harry intently. “They were brave and willing to fight for what was right, and they paid the steepest imaginable price for it.”

Harry swallowed, a few details about the news stories regarding Sirius Black coming to the surface of his swirling, chaotic thoughts. “And Sirius Black got charged with setting off the bomb that killed that new right group,” he said quietly. 

Arthur cupped a hand over his mouth, nodding. “He was innocent, I really believe that. But a part of me isn’t sorry that it happened,” he added, his cheeks red like it was hard for him to say it.

Harry had never given any of these things much thought. He’d been focused on just getting through each day and having some plan for the next one. But now, confronted with all the implications of how people felt about omegas, he found that the idea of people like the alpha in the bathroom getting obliterated by a homemade bomb didn’t sound all that displeasing to him, either.

“So, here we are,” Arthur said after a few moments. “I’m really glad you’re with us, Harry, and that you’re safe. But Molly and I would understand if this is all too much for you. We don’t want you to feel like you’re in any way being drawn into the trial, which is going to be...hard, to say the least. It’s going to bring up some issues that make a lot of people very angry, and what we’ve learned is that anyone associated with Sirius and Molly can become a target of that anger.”

Harry nodded, realizing that when Arthur had said there was a lot going on when Harry went to stay with the Dursleys, this was what he meant. Sirius Black’s trial must have taken a long time, and then for all the years since, Molly was helping him try to get a do-over.

Also, Harry felt alive with the new knowledge of a much brighter family history. Not one that he was ashamed to even be curious of, but one that he could be proud of. Here was someone sitting across from him who’d known and liked his parents, who had only good things to say about them. 

And Sirius Black, who Harry only knew as a striking-looking, dark-haired man he’d glimpsed on a couple of magazine covers over the year, had known them even better. Loved them, maybe. Harry’s heart felt like it could fly out of his chest.

Arthur was still watching him closely. “If you want to, Harry, we can find some place for you to go that will be safe, and where you’ll have everything you need. You don’t have to be close to all of this, but if you want to be, we’ll make that work for you, too. Not just because of your parents, but because it’s the right thing to do.” He quirked a smile. “And also because of your parents. They were family, and that means you are, too.”

Harry felt his eyes filling with tears for the tenth time in two days, but this time he also knew that he wasn’t going to be able to keep them at bay. He pulled his hands from his lap and slowly extended them across the table. With a warm smile, Arthur took them at once, rubbing his thumbs over Harry’s wrists.

“I’d like to stay, please,” Harry said, and Arthur’s small smile grew to light up his whole face.

“I’m so glad to hear that, Harry.” His eyes were filling with tears too, which made Harry feel much less silly over the streaks on his own cheeks. “Really, really glad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update Saturday July 27!
> 
> Join our Lightningstar Discord server!
> 
> Check out the Sirry Summer Fest!


	5. Sirius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day early, because I'll be running around this weekend. More Sirius POV! I hope you like it!
> 
> I confess I'm out of pre-written chapters, so I can't announce a posting date, but I'm hoping to stick to the weekly schedule at least for a bit! Fingers-crossed!

Number 12’s basement level had an all-wood bowling alley, one of the prototypes purchased from the world fair where the whole concept was born. Sirius remembered hearing once that a museum had offered a few hundred thousand dollars for it, but it didn’t look like much. Just some scarred wood built into a lane that was narrow to the point of impossibility even for Sirius, who’d always had a good eye.

Actually bowling with the valuable antique had been forbidden, of course. Now that he could do as he pleased, the allure was gone. Sirius picked up a ball, considered it, then set it back down. He stepped up onto the elevated lane and walked up and down it a few times instead, drinking Jameson from the bottle and wishing he’d been able to find something better than the single, dusty bottle forgotten in the back corner of what had once been a painstakingly-stocked full bar.

Alcohol took the edge off a rut.

In prison, if you let someone fuck you during their rut they might let you fuck them during theirs. In an all-alpha wing, though, it was hard to ever be sure. Sirius had only had one cellmate he’d had both the requisite attraction to (minimal) and the requisite trust level (maximum) to enter into that kind of arrangement, and he’d died in a skirmish three years before. That was a long time for an alpha to be alone with their own hand, but it had played into Sirius’ sinister delight in punishing himself.

Still, he was thinking a lot about that service Mr. Kreach had offered.

What kind of boys did they have? It was a classy place, so they’d be clean, pretty, and docile, without putting on too much of an act. He imagined waiting ages to bite, so that the boy stayed fully aware and half-afraid as long as possible. Maybe even making him come a time or two. That always surprised them. And call him old-fashioned, but Sirius loved the smell of a happy omega even more than a frightened one. “Pleasantly surprised” had a particular fragrance on an omega, subtle yet penetrating, so you could almost, faintly taste it.

He switched to walking on the iron chute that returned the balls. It was rounded, slippery, and slightly loose in places, like a booby-trapped balance beam. Sirius extended his empty left hand out for balance and held the right both out and up, loosely over his head to compensate for the additional weight of the bottle with its sloshing contents.

Maybe he’d just get the boy off and then send him away. That would be the ultimate act of masochism, wouldn’t it? Not that Sirius was masochistic, in the strictest sense of the word. But he did like the aspect of it that felt like punishment.

In the end he jerked off to the thought of spinning a doe-eyed omega boy around the moment he came in the door, jerking down his jeans and fucking into him a moment before subduing him with the bite. Thrusting into the unresisting body and growling against the sweet skin of the spot, feeling the pulse of endorphin-saturated blood, taking and taking and taking and giving nothing in return.

He lay panting on his back afterward, on the rug in the middle of the game room, staring at the ceiling and blinking slowly. He was waiting to feel terrible, to feel self-hate, to feel anything.

After a while he turned onto his side and buttoned his jeans with one hand, then succumbed to the numbness and just fell asleep.

*

The next morning Sirius woke up, threw up in the downstairs toilet, then took a long, cold shower. He was restless, too restless even to jerk himself off. He knew it would only make things worse. It was better to just sweat it out. So he slipped into some sweatpants that wouldn’t chafe too badly, reminding himself how crucial it was he go out soon for some fucking clothes. He barely had two sets of clothing. He left the house through the back door for the original garage.

There were two buildings on the expansive lot aside from the house. One was the original garage, which had been a carriage house in its earliest incarnation, but had been renovated into a simple, modern garage with two bays. It had been Sirius and Regulus’ domain for as long as he could remember. First for their tricycles and bicycles and RC cars, then eventually for whatever they bought to tinker with and drive their mother mad. The thought of Reg caused that surge of pain and affection that Sirius was so used to by now, he wouldn’t know what to do without it.

The other garage was a two-story structure with a guest residence above and a six car garage below, and along with his mother’s Aston Martin Sirius supposed her other cars were all still accounted for as well.

He wasn’t sure whether it would still be there, but when he pushed open the sticky walk-through door at the end of the paved walkway to the original garage, he saw it at once. It was even still under the same tarp Sirius had used to cover it when it was parked at his place by the lake.

His hands were shaking as he removed the cover, struggling a couple times with the cables, grimacing at the heavy black dust, nothing like the little puffs that had come off the sheet-covered furniture. But after just a few moments, the tarp pulled free completely and there it was, Sirius’ original pride and joy. The bike was a genuine Triumph Bonneville prototype that Reg had found somehow and pretended to be lording over Sirius for two hours before finally revealing it was actually a gift.

He rubbed his cheeks with the back of his hand, expecting tears, but he was surprisingly dry-eyed as he drank in the sight of it. Maybe, finally, there was more happiness than pain for him in this sort of memory.

He swung a leg the bike over and settled on the seat. It felt like it was made for him, just like it always had. He rocked the bike upright and flipped back the kickstand, flexed his hand over the clutch, then the gas, and brushed the kick start with his heel but didn’t put any force into it. It could ruin the bike to run it if it had really been sitting so long.

He sat there quite a while before he realized with a soft laugh that he’d forgotten all about his rut. Of course, as soon as he had that thought, it came back over him in a wave and he groaned, leaning all the way forward to rest his forehead against the uncomfortably hard handlebars.

Apparently Mr. Kreach was taking Sirius’ half-joking order from the day before a little too seriously. Sirius roamed the house and didn’t find him anywhere. That meant Sirius had to call around about the bike himself. He chose a shop at random, and then left a note by Mr. Kreach’s bedroom door the way his mother used to when she had instructions. Strangely — or, not so strangely, considering who he was dealing with — Mr. Kreach still kept one of the little notepads she’d liked, and a nice fountain pen, on the hall table outside his rooms.

_Arrange for bike to go to shop. And by bike I mean the bike, you know which one. Address is 1322 Main. _

Then Sirius changed his shoes and went out for a run. 

He probably should have anticipated the reporters, but in his defense, he’d been in prison for all the years he’d been famous.

He didn’t see anyone on his way out, but they must have been staked out somewhere, because he’d only gone two blocks, just beginning to hit his stride, when a car eased past, slid into park alongside the curb and a woman got out.

She was garish in every way. Garish clothes, garish make-up, garish hair. Sirius was glad he had on sunglasses, but even then the sight of her made him wince. It only got worse when the wind turned. She was doused in perfume, the kind that masked your scent, and for a horrible moment he thought she might be an omega. Who else wore that kind of stuff? He almost panicked, even though he knew he could control himself just fine.

But she was a beta, he realized a moment later, wrinkling his nose in a combination of distaste and surprise. She stepped into the middle of the sidewalk so he would either have to stop or hop the curb and go into the street to avoid her, so Sirius stopped running with a sigh and paused just outside scenting distance.

“Sirius Black,” said the woman, her red lips peeling back in a smile, revealing teeth that had to be false. They were unnaturally even and unnaturally white. “Rita Skeeter. If you have a few minutes, I’d love to ask you a couple questions.”

*

Sirius was sure that his attorney would be calling even before he saw the article. But then she surprised him by showing up at the front door instead, forcing Mr. Kreach from wherever he’d been hiding to let her in.

Sirius was in the dining room, where he had been eating microwave waffles without a tablecloth or place mat just to get on Mr. Kreach’s nerves. Mr. Kreach escorted her in.

“Molly!” he called with false cheer, already bracing himself for her fury. She looked at him coolly, then reached into her purse, pulled out a newspaper and dropped it at one end of the shiny table. She shoved it toward him and it glided smoothly along the polished wood, only coming to a stop when it struck the edge of Sirius’ plate.

He looked down. It was a front-page story, featuring a grainy photograph of Sirius in old running shorts and a tanktop, a very unimpressed smile fixed on Rita Skeeter. The angle of the photograph hid her face; all that was visible was her sleek, bottled-red hair. He grimaced at the headline.

_SIRIUS BLACK, MEDIA DARLING AND ACCUSED MURDERER, OUT FOR A RUN — OR A RUT?_

“Classy,” he muttered, trying to shove it back, but he only succeeded in getting it several inches away. Molly was leaning against the far end of the table, and when he glanced at her he saw a familiar expression on her face. It was the way she looked when she was choosing her words very carefully, and it meant that they were going to hurt.

“I told you to stay in during your ruts. And not twenty-four hours before you talked to this reporter, I told you not to comment to reporters, and also not to be rude.”

“I wasn’t rude,” Sirius said at once. Molly’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t!” he insisted. “ _She_ was rude. I had to either talk to her, or run her over. And she was wearing scent-blockers.”

“I know,” Molly said grimly. “She mentions it in the article. And then she mentions your ‘philosophical objections’ to the concept of scent-blockers.”

Sirius’ brows rose. “That’s not what I said. I don’t have philosophical objections to anything. That would imply I have philosophies.” But Molly didn’t so much as crack a smile, so Sirius sighed, sitting back with his hands outstretched, beseeching. “A beta, wearing scent-blockers? You don’t think that’s fucked up?”

Molly’s eye twitched. “I try to keep thoughts on politics to myself. It isn’t good for my job. And it isn’t good for my clients. Which is why I tell them, explicitly, to do the same.”

“It isn’t _politics_ ,” Sirius grumbled. 

“It’s a whole social movement,” Molly said impatiently. “Some people say everyone should wear scent-blockers and take suppressants. That secondary gender is a destructive concept.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “A ‘concept’? How can a biological fact be just a ‘concept’? And who are these ‘people’? Teenage betas? No offense, but seriously, Molly, who is actually going to be offended by what I said?”

Molly finally lost her temper. Sirius saw it happen. Her face flushed with color so her cheeks were as bright as her hair, and her eyes narrowed to slits. He wouldn’t admit it, but the sight made his blood run cold.

“Plenty of people, Sirius! You don’t have the luxury of being a clueless, opinionated rich _brat_ anymore! I can’t believe I’m telling you this, when you’ve spent most of your adult life sitting on your ass in prison, but you’re not untouchable, you _dumbass_! If the wrong person gets offended by the stuff that comes out of your mouth, it could affect the trial. The hearing. Hell, even the motion, depending on how the judge’s politics lean!”

Sirius was taken aback. “Was it really that bad?” he asked after a moment, swallowing against a sudden wave of sincere confusion. He looked down at the paper apprehensively, but couldn’t bring himself to reach for it.

“It really was,” Molly said more quietly. She pulled out a chair and sank into it.

Sirius drummed his fingers on the table. “Okay. What do we need to do, then?”

“I’m going to have someone call you. A PR firm. They’re good, so please just — do what they say.”

Sirius nodded mutely, chewing his lip. Molly’s look had softened a fraction. At one point in time that wouldn’t have been the case. Early in their acquaintance, Molly would just get angry at Sirius and stay that way. But just as he’d come to understand her over the years, she understood him better than most people did.

“Maybe you should think about calling someone. It could be kept discrete. Didn’t you have someone before…?”

Sirius’ stomach clenched, and his hands trembled where they gripped the edge of the table. “No.”

“Considering...your circumstances, and how long it’s been...I could see how a truncated rut could affect your judgment.”

Sirius snorted. “It’s not that bad.” He glanced up and saw how skeptical she looked. He felt his frustration welling, but he didn’t want to take it out on Molly, even if she was really, really wrong about this. “It’s a myth, that we can’t learn to get through it alone. It’s not _fun_ , but it’s fine. It would be worse to have some stranger there, and to do... _something_...with them. To just anyone.” He shrugged uncomfortably, but he was telling her the truth. At least, it was true for Sirius.

“We should also face the fact that at some point you may not have a choice,” Molly murmured.

Sirius rubbed a hand over his face. “Right.” He wasn’t willing to believe it would come to that. “Okay, I’ll behave.” He saw her skeptical look and raised his hands. “I swear, Molly, I won’t leave the house if that’s what it takes.” He grimaced as soon as the words came out of his mouth, but Molly’s look was already softening.

“Well, even I wouldn’t suggest _that_. I know how you feel about this place. It’s probably more likely to drive you insane than a couple of lonely ruts. Don’t you still have that lake property? Maybe you should get out of town.”

Sirius shook his head. “It’s leased out.” He avoided her eye clumsily. She was way too shrewd not to realize there was something he wasn’t saying, but too tactful to point it out. “I’ll be all right. I’ll avoid the reporters, I promise, and if I fail at that I’ll say whatever the PR people tell me to say.” He looked at her earnestly. “I mean it, Molly. No one wants me back in prison less than yours truly, after all. Want a waffle?” He nudged the plate toward her. “It’s early. Why are you here so early?” It should have been his first question. Last he knew, Molly lived all the way across town, an hour’s drive in traffic.

“I’ll pass on that fine cuisine, thanks. And I’m here early because you’re my first stop on the way to the office. I stayed over at a friend’s.” 

“Trouble in paradise, or was it just your night away from the brood? How many kids is it again? Thirteen, fourteen?”

Molly gave him a patient look. “Only five still at home, actually. But last night we had a guest.”

“Ah, right, one of your stray omegas.” He remembered Molly mentioning once that sometimes Arthur put up an omega with nowhere to go for a few nights. And when he did that, they understandably didn’t want Molly or Bill — the families’ alphas — around to make them anxious.

Molly looked at the waffles like she was reconsidering. “Are those cinnamon?” 

Sirius grinned and pushed his chair back. “Hold that thought. I’ll bring you some syrup.”

*

Molly had been gone an hour when the phone rang. Sirius picked up the phone himself; Mr. Kreach had once again disappeared. Sirius was going to have to figure out some way to make amends with him. Maybe by buying him a new coffin to sleep in, or a quart of human blood.

“Hello?”

He’d been expecting the PR people, but it was Molly instead. “Sirius, it’s me,” she said tersely. “I just got a few messages from Arthur, and apparently the omega Ron brought home — the one I mentioned offhand this morning — he wasn’t just anyone.”

“Oookay,” Sirius said, wondering what this fact had to do with him. 

“I’m really sorry about this, because I don’t need a PR team to tell me how bad it looks,” Molly went on. “You’re welcome to fire me, or, I mean, I can withdraw if that’s easier, and…”

“Molly,” Sirius cut in. “What. Are. You. Talking about?”

There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line. Sirius might have thought they’d been cut off, but he could hear Molly’s breathing. It sounded elevated.

“Ron brought a homeless omega to stay a couple nights. He had no idea of the connection, but — the kid is Harry.” Her voice broke, so that Sirius had put it together an instant before she added, “Harry _Potter_.”

*

Somehow, Sirius hadn’t thought about his godchild since he’d finally received confirmation of his release. At one time, he’d thought about him constantly. It had been half the reason he was desperate to get out those first few years. The thought of Harry growing up without him — instead with the _Dursleys_ , who were the worst kind of people. He didn’t know them at all, really, but he knew that all the years she was with James, and therefore, with Sirius too, Lily hadn’t had anything nice to say about her own sister, and Lily saw the best in everyone.

Also, they didn’t forward his letters to Harry. They sent them back unopened. Every birthday and Christmas card, every funny little note meant to be read aloud to a toddler, or a five-year-old, or a ten-year-old. Sirius hadn’t given up, though; not until Molly had told him herself, grim and sick-looking, that Harry wasn’t with the Dursleys any longer, and his emancipation records were sealed. 

It felt like losing James and Lily in a much more final way than he’d lost them already. Unfairly, perhaps, he’d transferred a lot of his love for them into the idea of his love for their son. He’d distracted himself from his grief for them with plans of all the ways he’d honor them through caring for Harry. 

Sirius had still thought that he’d find the kid one day. But then his appeal had gotten worse for a long time before it got better, and he hadn’t really expected to ever see a sunset again, let alone go out free in the world and hunt down James’ child.

“Are you there, Sirius?” Molly asked. “Should I come over? I hated to do this over the phone but I thought you should know right away. In case you…”

“Jesus, Molly, you aren’t fired,” Sirius murmured. “That would be...the most random reaction to good news I can think of,” he settled for. 

Molly gave a short, watery laugh. “You’re right. Yeah. It’s good news. Sorry, I can get tunnel vision. Arthur says he’s okay.”

“But he’s an omega,” Sirius added. He knew that wasn’t good news, but damn it, he liked the idea of the kid being that much more like James. He rubbed a hand hard over his cheeks, feeling his stubble rasp his palm. “And homeless? Christ. He’s really okay?”

“He only just presented, and he got lucky, I think,” said Molly quietly. “So yeah, he’s okay. We’ll take care of him now.”

“Fuck yes,” Sirius said adamantly. “Can I...do you think I could meet him, or…?”

Molly didn’t say yes right away, which startled Sirius. Was the kid _actually_ okay?

“He’s had a scare,” she said carefully after a moment. “But Arthur can talk to him about it.”

“A _scare_?” Sirius echoed.

“He’s all right,” Molly said. “Just shaken up. Arthur thinks he should have limited contact with alphas for now, and no offense, Sirius, but I did smell you this morning.

Sirius fidgeted. Right. The rut. 

“And he doesn’t seem to know anything about us, or his parents. So we need to ease him into...all of it.”

Sirius fumbled the phone. “What doesn’t he know about his parents? Those fucking _Dursleys_ , I _knew_ it…”

“There’s nothing we can do about that now,” Molly snapped, and if she was the only alpha in the conversation Sirius might have shut up. But she wasn’t.

“I can think of a couple things that should be done about it. Does that slimy piece of shit Vernon still work mid-level at OriginCorps? The CEO will want to kiss my ass, now that it looks like I’ll be an eligible shareholder again soon...”

“Sirius,” she said firmly. “Remember earlier, when you promised not to fuck everything up?”

“That was _before_ you told me _Harry_ was…”

“The stakes are even higher now. I shouldn’t have to tell you. Your act needs to be _better_ , not _worse_.”

Sirius couldn’t argue with that. He worried his lower lip and leaned against the desk. “Will you tell him...that I always tried?” It wasn’t completely true; he’d given up there at the end, but it hadn’t meant he didn’t care, only that he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Yeah,” Molly said. “I can definitely tell him that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments give me fuel! <3
> 
> If you want to talk about Sirius/Harry (Sirry or, as I like to call it, lightningstar!) then consider joining this small but dedicated bunch of fans in [the discord server](https://discord.gg/k2y8M5g)!


	6. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta! If you see errors I’d be glad if you pointed them out.
> 
> Hoping to write several chapters next weekend and return to a regular schedule thereafter. Hope you like this one. ❤️

# 

Harry woke up at the Weasleys’ the second time and realized that the house was overly quiet. Then he saw the clock and wanted to swear. It was nine a.m. He stumbled into the hallway, wearing the pajamas he’d borrowed from Ron and which were comically oversized on him, and came up short at the sight of Arthur, standing a respectful distance from the doorway holding two cups of coffee.

“Good morning, Harry.”

Harry leaned against the doorway and rubbed his eyes. “Hi.”

“Do you like coffee?” 

Harry nodded shyly and took the cup. Arthur, seeing that he wasn’t alarmed by getting a step closer, touched his elbow. The contact felt nice. Not quite as necessary as it had a couple days before, but still. Nice.

“Let’s go in the kitchen.”

Harry nodded and followed Arthur, holding the oversized ceramic cup by the handle but enjoying the warmth. There had been an edge of frost on the window when Harry woke up, but the house felt tight and warm. Still, Harry was struck by that cold-morning urge to curl up with his cup and let the steam make his cheeks pink, like someone on TV.

“Do you take cream and sugar? There’s some stuff here.” Arthur gestured toward a silver tray on the kitchen island where Harry had eaten cereal the morning before. The cream was in a little white pitcher and the sugar was in cubes in a matching cup with tiny silver tongs. It all looked so nice and thoughtfully put together, like something in a movie, not the way real people made coffee. A little intimidated, and even though he only drank coffee out of necessity rather than for the taste and would probably enjoy cream and sugar, he turned the cup around in his hands and shook his head.

“I’ll just drink it like this.”

“Well, it’s there if you change your mind.” Arthur sat down and smiled. 

Harry pulled out his stool, perched on it, and waited for Arthur to say something. It wasn’t a strained, anticipatory kind of silence, though. It felt comfortable, like Arthur might not say whatever he was planning to say until noon and that would be just fine. But in reality, only a couple minutes went by while Harry sipped carefully at his coffee. It was hot and strong, which he wasn’t used to, but after he got over the surprise he liked the taste.

Then Arthur said, “Yesterday, after we talked, I also spoke to Molly.”

Harry blinked. It wasn’t completely unexpected, that Arthur might retract his offer, but he still felt disappointment form a fast knot in his stomach.

“Then she—your—Mrs. Weasley doesn’t want me to stay?” 

Arthur’s brow furrowed. “Of course she does. We’d already agreed before I brought it up with you.”

Harry’s shoulders slumped with relief and his breath left him in a huff. “Oh. Then…?”

“She also spoke to Sirius yesterday.”

Harry sat up straight again and set down his coffee cup. “So he knows I’m here?”

Arthur nodded. “He’d like to see you when that’s possible, but for now, he just wanted us to tell you that he’s glad you’re safe. He has always tried to be able to be there for you and it’s never been possible, and I know he wants to support you however he can now.”

“But he’s an alpha,” Harry said, “so he isn’t coming here?” He asked the question almost in alarm. He knew it wasn’t fair but he didn’t even want to see Mrs. Weasley yet. The idea of an alpha in close quarters made Harry uneasy, mated or not. 

“Yes, he’s an alpha. So, for right now we’re certainly going to maintain a physical distance between the two of you. Though I feel like I should say that you have nothing to fear from Sirius, under any circumstances.”

Harry must have looked about as skeptical as he felt because Arthur smiled sadly. “I know it doesn’t feel this way right now, but not all alphas surrender themselves to a rut. And Sirius is a good person who I would personally trust.”

Harry was unconvinced, but he sipped his coffee and didn’t argue.

“For now we were thinking phone calls could be a good way for the two of you to say hello, visit a bit without all the...pressure of being in person.”

“Okay,” Harry said. 

Arthur smiled. “You’re welcome to think about it.”

Harry shook his head. “No, it’s okay.” Then he thought about what Arthur had just said, about trust and “not all alphas,” and added firmly, “And Mrs. Weasley, she should come home.”

Arthur nodded. “I think so, too, if you’re ready.”

Harry’s heart was hammering and his nerves were spiking and there was no way Arthur couldn’t tell, but he politely pretended not to notice, only smiling with that warm serenity that Harry was so drawn to. 

“I’ll be fine,” Harry promised.

“Good. Then she’ll come here after work, and we can all have dinner together.”

Arthur scrambled eggs in a giant pan and gave Harry a pile of them in a bowl, covered with shredded cheese. Harry ate until he thought he might be sick. While he was eating, Arthur went out of the room and came back when Harry was scraping the last bits of cheese from the bowl. Arthur was carrying a laundry basket heaped with folded clothes.

“I hope it’s okay, but I pulled out some of the clothes Percy left. I thought you could give them a try. He’s about your size.”

Harry swallowed, feeling uneasy but glad at the thought of clothes he wouldn’t swim in like the ones he’d borrowed from Ron. “Thanks. I won’t mess them up.”

Arthur smiled. “Mess them up all you want. If you like them, they’re yours. We’ve been meaning to donate it all somewhere, anyway.”

After that, Harry was free to wander the house. He remembered how the television worked, complicated though it was, from Ron’s demonstration the day before. There were also a couple of video game consoles and, most curiously, an internet-enabled computer in the small office, across from a big, serious-looking desk where Ron said his mother sometimes worked from home.

Harry didn’t turn anything on. He still felt like the house should be off-limits, no matter what the Weasleys said. After wandering through the first-story rooms, he ultimately found himself back in the bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the floor to inventory the clothes Arthur had leant —  _ given _ — to him. 

Harry and Percy  _ were _ close in size. The first things Harry tried on fit: a pair of nice, but comfortably broken-in jeans that hugged his hips and thighs and a grey t-shirt in a thick cotton blend that felt soft and stretchy on his chest and stomach.

He walked around the room twice, fingering the soft fabric of the hem unconsciously, then curled up in the luxuriously soft bed. He meant to lie down for just a moment, but wound up falling asleep. He didn’t wake until mid-afternoon, to the sounds of Ron and Ginny coming home from school.

Harry sat up and rubbed his eyes. He could hear their muffled voices, elevated but with laughter, as though they were engaged in the kind of lighthearted argument that Harry already recognized was a staple of their siblinghood. He straightened his shirt and went out to see them. They were in the living room, giving competing narratives to Arthur about something that happened in a class they had together, while casually shedding their backpacks and jackets onto the furniture.

Arthur folded his arms. “Kids. Put your stuff away, please.”

They sighed but picked everything back up without complaint. “Hi, Harry,” said Ron, with a cheerful but awkward little wave. “How…?” He looked back and forth between his father and Harry.

“Harry and I had a talk this morning, and your mom will be home this afternoon.”

Ron smiled. “At least you’re not subjecting him to the twins yet.”

Arthur laughed. “No, he’s got a few days’ reprieve before that.”

Apparently it was Ginny’s turn to make dinner. Harry, eager to be useful, offered to help. He followed her into the room, admiring the gleam of her dark red hair. While all the Weasleys were distinctly red-headed, no two of them seemed to have the same coloring. Ginny had a clear complexion except for a smattering of dark freckles on her cheekbones, and her hair was a deep, rich color like a low flame. 

“So, what sounds good?” she asked, as though she was talking to herself, and blew out a breath through her teeth as she opened one of the sleek white upper cabinets. She frowned at a stack of plates, closed the cabinet and opened the next one, and then frowned harder at rows of canned vegetables.

“Don’t you live here?” Harry asked, puzzled, opening the requisite cabinet which he’d discovered earlier, full of boxed meal kits.

“Yes, smartass,” she said, glancing at him with a fleeting, hesitant look in her eyes, as though she worried a little offhand name-calling would wound him. Harry grinned reassuringly and she relaxed immediately. She thumbed through some of the boxes with her nose wrinkled. “I hate this stuff. It all tastes like preservatives.”

“Then why don’t you make something else?”

She turned a blank look on him. “I don’t cook.”

Harry’s brows raised.

“This doesn’t count,” she explained, pointing to the cabinet. “That’s just mixing a packet of x with a cup of water then combining it with y.”

“True,” Harry allowed. He closed the cabinet. “I can help you, if you want. What kinds of things do you like?”

Twenty minutes later, there was cauliflower steaming on the stovetop and Ginny was poking uncertainly at a curry sauce simmering fragrantly on the adjacent burner.

“What is that  _ smell _ ?” Ron demanded, coming in. His jaw literally dropped at the sight of the food, and he looked at Ginny like he suspected her of possession.

“It was him,” she retorted, nodding toward Harry, who was perched on a stool at the kitchen island. He smiled, abashed, at Ron’s expression.

“You’re a chef!” Ron exclaimed.

“No,” Harry said hastily. “I just know how to make a few things.”

“Kids, Molly will be here in a few minutes, if you…” Arthur trailed off, his nostrils flaring. Harry had never thought he particularly resembled Ron, but he saw it, suddenly, in the shade of blue of his eyes and how they were perfectly round when he was truly surprised.

“I hope you like curry,” Harry said with a smile.

“It’s our favorite, but we always order takeout,” Ron said. Harry was nodding, since Ginny had said as much. She’d also added they’d tried without success to make Indian from scratch before, which was why they still had all the seasonings in the far corner of the spice cabinet. “This looks even better than what we get, though. If only we had a little naan.”

Harry slid off his stool. “We could make some, if you’ve got any yogurt?”

Ginny laughed like Harry had just told a joke. “Are you being serious?”

“Oh my god, you guys,” Harry muttered, squeezing past Ron to reach the refrigerator. “It’s not that hard. Honestly.”

“I’ll set the table while you finish astonishing my children, Harry,” Arthur said with a soft laugh. 

There was half a container of plain yogurt in the frig that hadn’t reached its expiration date. Harry held it up triumphantly.

“Ron, open a window,” he advised. “Ginny, where’s your cast iron skillet?”

Her face went perfectly blank. “Cask iron what?”

Harry laughed and rolled his eyes. “A heavy black frying pan?”

Her expression cleared. “Oh! Drawer under the oven, I think.”

The distraction of finishing up the cooking, and helping Ron fry the bread, kept Harry distracted from the fact Molly was coming home. And then she arrived, and though he smelled her, it was anticlimactic. The house  _ already _ smelled like her, after all. And it wasn’t the overwhelming, fear-and-excitement-inducing smell he remembered from those minutes in the bathroom at the school. It was just a smell, like other smells, that carried information that he could process like a rational person.  _ Alpha. Female. Mated _ . Still, the laughter that had been bubbling under the surface of every word of his erstwhile cooking lesson with the Weasley siblings subsided and he had a hard time making eye contact when he followed Ron into the dining room.

“Mom, this is Harry,” Ron said to the woman leaning against the back of a chair at the end of the table.

She looked like she did in the pictures. Round-faced, but with a sternness to her eyes that belied the rosiness in her cheeks and the soft curve of her smile. Her hair was quite curly, similar in color to Ron’s in that it was in some places golden and in some places, frankly, orange, and she was petite, much shorter even than Ginny.

But in the pictures, she didn’t exude the energy of her secondary gender. She was an authoritative alpha, but her energy was quieter than most alphas Harry had known in his life, he recognized that even without depending on the omega instincts. She had her body deliberately angled away from his and her shoulders rounded, though her gaze was steady.

“Hello, Harry,” she said warmly, and the sound of her voice helped him relax. Arthur was watching him, probably ready to scent comfort, and Harry was glad he didn’t feel the need to do it. Harry didn’t want to have to have his omega side appeased in order to function. He wanted to figure out how to get back to being himself, without letting the new world of his omega status eclipse everything else.

“Hello, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry murmured, then at once he blanched. “Or, should I call you alpha?”

A shadow of darkness passed over her face and Harry struggled with the brief and omega-driven urge to curl up on the floor in a show of submissiveness. But at once, the look cleared, and she said firmly, “No, Harry, you don’t have to call me that. Molly is fine, though so is Mrs. Weasley, if that makes you more comfortable.”

Harry’s stuttering heartbeat slowed back to something resembling its normal rhythm. “Okay. Yeah, I think Mrs. Weasley seems okay, for now.”

“Wonderful. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m glad to meet you. And goodness, what is that smell?”

Harry smiled, letting Ron fill her in on what was honestly some very simple weeknight cooking, but which Ron made sound like an episode of Top Chef. When he’d calmed down, Molly listening all the while with an arched brow, she turned her smile back on Harry.

“Where’d you learn to cook?”

“Oh, on my own, mostly,” he said with a shrug. The Dursleys were rather indoor people, and Harry wasn’t allowed to watch television, or play Dudley’s video games, or go to the library. Letting him work in the kitchen, alone, and try new things was a strange sort of unspoken compromise he and Petunia had worked out over the years.

Molly didn’t press, which was a relief. Harry didn’t want to talk about the Dursleys unless it was absolutely necessary. 

“Well, I’m starving. Let’s eat. I’m certain it will be the best thing we’ve had on this table that didn’t arrive here premade in styrofoam. None of us is much for cooking.”

They carried plates into the kitchen, loaded them up, and Harry settled uneasily in his chair, watching hopefully as each Weasley took their first bite. Their reactions made him grin.

“Wow, I didn’t even know I liked cauliflower,” Ginny said.

Arthur swallowed. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he told his daughter, then turned to Harry. “Amazing, Harry, really. I can’t believe all this came out of my own kitchen.”

“I was sure I’d mess it up,” Ron said wonderingly, “but the naan is perfect. I think it tastes better than the stuff from the restaurant.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Arthur told his son.

“It’s too sweet,” Harry corrected Ron, though he thought the naan was good, too. “You really need plain yogurt. But, um, I’m glad you guys like it. And really, Ginny made it. I was only helping.”

That statement had the unintended effect of making them all laugh, but Harry found that though all the compliments were making him flustered, he was warm from head to toe, too. And also quite hungry. It had been some time since the eggs. So he applied himself to his own plate.

The Weasleys took turns pausing in their eating to talk about the various events of their days. Harry listened with a familiar blend of fascination and envy. Overhearing real families’ conversations had always given him this same strange sense of eavesdropping on something precious and forbidden to him.

“Honestly,” Molly said after she’d finished her serving. “I don’t think food has tasted this good to me since I was pregnant.”

Harry blurted, “You were pregnant?” 

The busy table fell quiet in an instant. Though the silence felt only surprised, not hostile, Harry still felt himself blush. “I just...didn’t realize. That, um.”

Molly looked amused. So did Arthur, but he was hiding it better, probably trying not to embarrass Harry. As though he could feel any worse.

“Most biological females can carry children, Harry, regardless of their secondary gender,” Arthur said kindly. He looked at Molly with naked affection. “And I couldn’t become pregnant with Molly’s children. Only a biological male can impregnate someone else.” He looked distant for a moment, and Harry saw Molly reach out and squeeze Arthur’s hand. He was curious. Regardless whether an alpha female could get pregnant, was it true that most omegas, male or female, craved pregnancy?

The thought horrified Harry more than a little. Would he come to feel that way, too?

Arthur caught his eye and smiled again. “I would have enjoyed being pregnant, I think, but what I wanted most of all were, well, babies.” His cheeks tinted, the first time Harry had ever seen him discomposed.

“Whatever were you thinking,” Molly murmured, winking at Ron, who laughed.

“I forgot they grow up to be teenagers who’ll eat you out of house and home and hide their dirty laundry instead of washing it themselves,” Arthur said without missing a beat. 

“You should have had more girls,” Ginny sniffed.

“Well, that’s what I requested each time,” Arthur said seriously. “Your mother must have had other ideas.”

Molly rolled her eyes while Ron balled up a napkin and threw it at Arthur, who caught it, chuckling, then threw it back faster than Ron could react. It landed on the slope of his forehead and stuck. When everyone laughed at that, Harry did too.

“I’m sorry,” he said when everyone had quieted down, but at least now he didn’t feel he’d irrevocably offended anyone with his earlier assumption. “There’s just a lot I don’t know.”

“You’re not alone there, Harry,” Molly said quietly, looking him in the eye at last. Harry felt a thrill of trepidation, but their eye contact didn’t feel abnormal, and the sting of the alpha scent in the air was beginning to fade into the background, almost like it wasn’t there. “At least you care to learn.”

“That makes you vastly superior to most people,” said Ginny. “Most people want to be ignorant.”

There were murmurs of agreement around the table. Harry glanced at Arthur, who was frowning, a reflection of how Harry felt. He wasn’t sure that being reminded of most people’s philosophies was any comfort.


	7. Sirius

Sirius was only two days out of his rut when he had to go to court. It was one of those “status conferences” that he recalled usually being boring but occasionally containing some disastrous information. Excellent fodder for nightmares.

He wandered the house for hours the night before, full of a brand-new anxiety and unable to pin down the source. The first time around he’d struggled to care what happened to him. In prison, he’d sometimes reflected on the months leading up to his trial and wanted to strangle that version of himself. But of course, seeing beyond what he’d lost had felt impossible then.

During the appeal his hyperfocus on each next step left no room for doubt that everything would turn out all right in the end. If he’d let himself consider the alternative it would have swallowed him while, he was sure. He’d have stopped answering Molly’s letters and given up.

And now he felt paralyzed by the possibility that this halfway-version of freedom was a hiccup of the justice system, a ruse. He was out of the Azkaban cage but he wore a collar and chain and the threat of being reeled back in hung over every moment. When he woke up curled into a shape that fit the proportions of the cot in his cell and realized he was lying on a down mattress in the best guest room at Grimmauld he wondered if he was in the middle of a vivid dream.

_Waking up in his mother’s house. Like he was still sixteen and rebellious instead of thirty-six and prison-hardened._

But he wasn’t sixteen. He wasn’t trapped in the house til the next morning he could rush off to school. He didn’t have his friends a phone call away. They were gone. Even Remus — well.

He carefully sidestepped that thought, a maneuver so familiar to him by now he did it without thinking.

The morning of the hearing, Sirius, coming off a sleepless night, couldn’t choose among his suits. The clothing in the closet was all painfully familiar. Mr. Kreach had everything cleaned. They hung encased in sleek plastic, all the standard colors: navy, black, charcoal, grey. He fingered the sleeve of each jacket with his nose wrinkled. He could remember wearing each one of them to court the first time around. 

He chose the blue because it matched the only tie he could find, which was dark red with a tan stripe. It was his house color at school and while he’d never thought much of it — basically just maroon, with a gold accent, not particularly classy — he remembered having to grudgingly admit that the color really suited James.

These days thinking of James led instantly to Harry, after years trying to avoid that train of thought. Now his heart leapt at the idea he’d meet the kid soon. James’ kid. Lily’s kid. He couldn’t fucking wait.

Mr. Kreach drove him to the courthouse. Sirius knew how to drive, and he wasn’t sure whether it was kindness or cruelty that had him letting Mr. Kreach play chauffeur. Mr. Kreach didn’t complain — but of course he wouldn’t — and if Sirius had no use for him, he had the thought Mr. Kreach would be more pained than he was by being of service.

Sirius had no energy to try to rile the old man today. He gave him a distracted nod when he slid into the backseat and kept the partition up the whole way, staring moodily out his window and tapping his heel against the floorboard, clutching his jumping knee.

When they pulled up, Molly Weasley stood sentry exactly where she’d proposed they meet, at the formal courthouse entrance where no one congregated. People generally came in the back, where there was a ramp instead of stairs or, for those who came in at ground level, security then an elevator.

“Well,” he said, stepping out of the car lwith a bright smile for Molly, “at least I won’t have what’s-his-nuts on the bench this time. Anything’ll be better than that.”

Her expression was blank. “What are you talking about?”

He gave her navy pinstripe suit an appreciative once-over. “You look nice, Weasley. I forgot how you capitalize on the whole alpha thing in the courtroom.”

“Sirius,” Molly said, unsmiling. “Do you think you’re getting a new judge?”

Sirius’ deliberately chipper smile faded at once. “Yes?” he said, almost pleading.

Molly sighed. “For someone intelligent, you’re so…” she waved a hand at him and looked put-out. “How did you not realize that when your case was remanded _back to the district court_ that also meant _back_ to Judge Wyburn?” 

When she put it that way, it seemed more clear. “I knew it would be ‘a’ district court,” he allowed, feeling nauseous as he took in the courthouse steps and the stately building they led to. The idea of walking inside now would have had his hackles up if he had any. As it was, his shoulders hunched and he took a backward step toward the car, as though he might flee the way he’d come. Mr. Kreach, of course, seized that moment to drive off so abruptly the tires practically squealed.

Sirius jumped back from the curb and swore. The commotion drew the attention of the lurking press, and he swore again.

“Watch your goddamn mouth,” Molly muttered, grabbing him by the arm. 

Sirius was startled into a laugh. “People should know how funny you are,” he said when she glared at him. “It’s your unsung talent.”

“Get inside the court house right now, Sirius, before we make some sort of ridiculous headline like ‘defense counsel slaps cheeky alpha on courthouse steps.’”

Sirius snorted, but the reminder of the possibility for bad press was effective. He fell into step beside Molly, who somehow managed to outwalk him even though she was several inches shorter and wearing terrifying heeled shoes. 

Sirius let Molly tow him up the stairs, keeping his head down and focusing his gaze half on the next step and half on his knees. He needed a new wardrobe (a new house, a new life). He had the sudden, certain, terrifying thought that it was all going to happen the same way this time too. A cycle he couldn’t escape; the second production of the same play. He was reprising his role, down to the costume; all that had changed was that now he had a few grey hair and three crude prison tattoos.

“Sirius.” 

He snapped his gaze to Molly’s. They were just outside the doors and Sirius had frozen unconsciously, his gaze fixed on the reflective glass of the door at the entrance.

“What?”

Her perpetually chilly expression thawed a bit and she squeezed the elbow she still held. “You’re okay. You can do this. All you have to do is sit there and look pretty.”

“I’m great at that.”

“I know. Your challenge will be keeping your mouth shut.”

“Not my talent.”

She rolled her eyes and opened the door. Sirius followed her inside, the ghost of a smile lingering on his face. But he still felt like the building was swallowing him alive and by the time they’d gotten through security, his heart was beating fast and his fingers and toes were numb.

Molly, watching him, pulled him to one side on the other end of the metal detector. “Here,” she said tersely, pressing something into his hand. Sirius looked down in surprise.

It was a photo of James around the time he’d died. Well, maybe earlier; he looked school-aged. But no, the eyes —

Sirius almost fumbled the picture when he realized it was Harry, not James. It was obvious as soon as he realized it. James’ sweet guileless smile was there, and the strong lines of his jaw, his messy hair. But the eyes were all Lily, and there was something else about the face that had nothing to do with either of them. For a moment the photo was James, for a moment it was James and Lily coalescing into a new person, and then Sirius just saw Harry. Someone he hadn’t seen since he wore diapers but who nonetheless had always occupied a distinct place in Sirius’ heart.

He grinned up at Molly, who was watching him closely.

“God,” he said, his voice tight. “He’s beautiful.”

Her eyes narrowed — not quite a glare; thoughtful. “Yes,” she agreed. “He’s a nice kid. Handsome. Though with his genetics there wasn’t any other likely outcome. Think of that kid when we’re in there. Maybe it’ll help you keep your shit together.” 

Sirius’ smile faded again as he followed her, tucking the photo in his pocket. Then he found he couldn’t quite let go of it and withdraw his hand, so he walked the whole way with his hand there, in his pocket, the slick surface of the photo against his palm, tracing the paper-sharp edges of the print with his thumb.

Security slowed down the reporters, except there were more waiting on the other side. One of them was Rita Skeeter.

Sirius gave her a sharp look. She was standing at the back of the gaggle with her arms crossed and made no effort to clamor to ask a question or snap a photograph. Instead she regarded him coolly as he followed Molly to the bottom of the stairs and he felt like he could feel her eyes on his back as he turned to take them two at a time.

The courthouse looked exactly the same as it had years ago. Public infrastructure rarely earned a remodel in the taxpayers’ eyes. And with buildings like this they had the special excuse of maintaining the original characteristics of a _historic structure._ Sirius heard the last two words in his mother’s voice.

Sirius tried not to pay attention to the building at all. The high ceilings, the copious amounts of marble everywhere...even the bannisters on the staircase which he clutched automatically for balance were mottled red stone.

There were some protesters outside the courtroom in the second-story hallway carrying hand-drawn signs. Sirius looked at them curiously. They were all young, betas and alphas, he thought. In the cacophony of smells bouncing around the contained building he shouldn’t have been able to tell, he was directly off his rut and every pheromone stood out, filling him with the embarrassing urge to sneeze. 

They were just kids, he realized, catching a couple of their eyes and watching them blink, looking dazed and unsure how to engage. Like they hadn’t expected him to actually show up. He wondered absently how he compared in person to the anti-hero that the political movement that had hijacked his image and life story had created. 

Sirius always had a dubious regard for his fan club. He’d shredded their letters and felt uncomfortable about their devotion. He knew they weren’t _his_ fans but rather saw him as a symbol of their worthy cause — for the most part. There’d been a few who scented their mail obscenely and clearly had some sort of imprisoned-alpha fetish. 

Not reassured by the show of support, Sirius dodged further engagement by leading the way into the courtroom.

There was press here too of course but they were hushed by the bailiff when they started shouting at Sirius. A kid that had to be one of Molly’s sat in the gallery beside a girl whose cloud of brown curls and intense expression made Sirius smile. A girlfriend maybe. He winked at the boy, and got a confused look in return.

“That’s Charlie?” he murmured to Molly. She followed his glance and laughed.

“Ron.”

“ _What_?” Sirius was aghast. “Wasn’t he born a week ago?”

“Ha, ha.”

She pushed his arm and he obediently walked down the aisle between the rows of seats to the hinged waist-high door into the space in front of the judge’s bench. The old bastard wasn’t there yet, but his court reporter was feeding a roll of paper into her machine and the prosecutor was lounging at the table to the judge’s right, laughing over his shoulder at something the security staff had said.

The table for Molly and Sirius also looked the same as he remembered. He tried not to be too morbid as he slid into the chair next to Molly’s, but he was sure he heard the faint clanking of chains. They’d kept him cuffed during every phase of his appeal. It was standard procedure for an alpha serving a sentence.

“All rise,” the bailiff intoned before Sirius had even settled into his chair. He got to his feet. The chorus of everyone behind him doing the same still made him think of being in church.

The judge came in. Finally something was changed; the enormous, red-faced, wheezing man Sirius remembered had lost about half his body weight. It made him look older — or maybe that was the years — his lank hair thinner, his cheeks grey and saggy like deflated balloons.

Sirius might not have recognized him, if he hadn’t fixed Sirius with a disapproving frown that would be unmistakable to Sirius on any face.

Just as quickly as he’d grimaced at Sirius he was looking away, matter-of-fact, toward the prosecution table.

“You may all be seated.”

His voice sounded thinner, too. Weaker. Sirius wondered if he was sick. It was always one or the other that resulted in people making drastic changes: for their health or because of their health. He suspected the latter in this case.

Sitting, he watched the judge do the same, smoothing his robes. He cleared his throat and arranged his little microphone closer to his mouth.

“I’ll now call case number 82-CR-137, the state versus Sirius Black. Appearances?”

The prosecutor stood up. He was young and smarmy-looking. “State appears by assistant district attorney Eric Leawood.”

Molly had stood as well. “May it please the court, the defendant appears in person and through counsel, Molly Weasley.”

“Are there other appearances?”

“No, your honor,” said the prosecutor, once more leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed. 

“Then let’s get to it. We’re here for a scheduling conference, isn’t that so?”

“Yes, judge,” said Molly. “So the court is aware, we intend to file dispositive motions.”

This was all Latin to Sirius, but he remembered Molly explaining to him these were the motions to dismiss, the last effort to avoid having a new trial.

“So noted,” murmured the judge without expressing a reaction to that news one way or the other. His jowls wobbled as he regarded his calendar.

“Working back from the trial date might be prudent, your honor,” said the prosecutor, inspecting his fingernails. “The state can be ready in thirty days.”

A sound that was partially indignant, partially shocked came out of Molly. “Judge, that isn’t realistic.”

“No?”

She almost looked startled, but she was a professional and reined herself in immediately. “No, your honor.”

“The state can’t see what the hold up would be, your honor,” the prosecutor continued,now looking at the back of his hand like he was admiring an engagement ring. “We’ve already argued this case once. The defense should explain why it needs so much time to prepare.”

“Your honor, that was almost _fifteen years ago_ ,” Molly said through gritted teeth. “And in any event, the defense doesn’t intend to merely recycle its old material. This is a new trial in every meaning of the phrase.”

“Except we get the same old judge,” Sirius muttered to himself. Molly must have overheard, because she stomped on his foot with eerie accuracy and without giving anything away to anyone else in the room.

“Well, we’ll set the trial in thirty days for now. If the defense wants a continuance, it’s welcome to move the court for one. I’m open-minded, ladies and gentlemen, and I’ll certainly give such a motion a fair read. But for now I tend to agree with the prosecution, so we’ll look out thirty days. That makes it August 29, doesn’t it? And dispositive motions will be due the 22nd.”

“Your honor…” Molly began, then took a deep breath. The judge looked at her with an iced-over smile.

“Yes, counsel?”

She met his eye and smiled. “Never mind.”

“That’s that, then,” said the judge. Next case!”

Molly was visibly angry by the time they got back out into the hallway. Sirius felt detached from it all. He was aware thirty days was soon, but in a way it felt merciful. He thought waiting around for the trial was bound to be the hardest part.

“That went well,” he said wanly to her when they had made their way through the densest part of the crowd. 

Molly shot him a disbelieving look. “No, Sirius, it—” She grimaced and shook her head. “The judge being in a rush is a bad sign. But we’ll ask for the continuance and surely—surely we’ll get it. Any appellate court would overturn a ruling forcing a murder trial without the opportunity to gather more evidence.”

“I…” Siriius looked pointedly at the bathroom. He needed a moment more than he needed the toilet. Molly had caught the prosecutor’s eye, and he was gesturing her over. She nodded back, arched an eyebrow at Sirius grimly, and shooed him toward the rest rooms.

Sirius escaped into the men’s room — grimacing at the sight of even more marble tile. Sirius wasn’t sure why he was surprised, but when he finished scrubbing his knuckles red and doused them in hot water, he glanced up to find Rita Skeeter’s reflection hovering behind his in the mirror.

“Jesus,” he breathed.

“Jesus,” she echoed, peering into the sink. “Are you scrubbing in for surgery, Dr. Black?”

He scowled at her and shut off the water. “What are you doing here?” He tore a paper towel from the roll and wadded it up in his palms, twisting around so his back was to the door. He didn’t like it, but it was better than not facing a known threat. 

“I’m covering a case,” she said innocently. “A very big case. The kind of thing one would really _kill_ to get some exclusivity on.”

Sirius snorted, giving her a scathing look. He’d admired Molly in her heels, which made her seem authoritative, somehow. Skeeter’s were bright red and garish as her lipstick. “You don’t look like you’re equipped to kill anyone,” he said skeptically. “Pardon me if I find myself unintimidated.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about a literal kill.” Her teeth flashed, and Sirius remembered that betas were always the best hunters. “And I don’t think threatening _you_ , directly, would ever be helpful. I’m well-aware that you don’t give a rat’s ass about yourself, Mr. Black. Everyone knows that. It’s endeared you to most of our generation and half of the next. But please don’t mistake me, Mr. Black. I find self-sacrifice weak. I am _not_ another fan.”

Well, this was oddly refreshing. Sirius almost found himself wanting to like her before she went on.

“There are people you do care about, though. You cared about James Potter and Lily Evans. And now you care about their son.”

Sirius felt the picture in his pocket as though it suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. And though of course she couldn’t know it was there, and certainly couldn’t mean to be make such an innocuous threat as a snatched photo, his hand dove into his pocket and cradled the bit of paper and glossy ink protectively.

Before prison, Sirius might have snapped at once, or flown into a shouting rage. Now he knew that in the first moments of an attack, one was always better-served by staying still and choosing your words carefully.

“What exactly are you saying, Ms. Skeeter?”

“I know he’s an omega,” she began carelessly. “I know he was raised by some stunningly intolerant people. One of them even works for OriginCorps.”

The reference to the big company puzzled Sirius. “Anti-capitalist too?” Sirius said in an ordinary voice, though his heart was pounding at the mention of even a few details of Harry’s life, he thought if she knew by now he was living at the Weasleys’, she would have opened with the fact his alleged victim’s child was housed at his attorney’s home. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

She looked surprised, then smug. “OriginCorps has been making a killing lately off the traditionalists with a ‘back to basics’ campaign regarding omega culture. Perhaps you’re out of tune with modern advertising, though, considering.”

Sirius had already thought television was garbage long before Azkaban, but he wasn’t going to get into it with her.

“So you’re demanding what exactly? And at what price? I’d rather we just be direct, here.”

“I want an exclusive.” She leaned her hip against the sink. “In exchange, I won’t make trouble for your little omega.”

 _He’s not mine_ , Sirius thought he should say, but he wondered if it would be true. He curved his hand around the photo like a fragile talisman.

She didn’t even know where Harry was. She thought he was still with the _Dursleys_ , when he’d been emancipated for over a year. Logically he knew she was no threat, but the buzzing, overprotective part was ready to bare his neck to insulate Harry any way he could. Then again, in Sirius’s experience a blackmailer wasn’t guaranteed to honor their bargains. Quite the contrary.

“You can go get fucked,” he told Rita Skeeter with a smile.

She didn’t even flinch. Her cool smile remained fixed as she put her hand in her red patent leather purse and withdrew a business card. She set it on the edge of the sink.

“Should you have a change of heart,” she explained, and walked out at an unhurried pace, her heels clacking.

Sirius took a few long moments, regulating his breathing and staring at the business card on the edge of the sink. He wanted to leave it, except he didn’t want anyone to have seen him walk out after Rita Skeeter and then find her business card lying around, did he? He hadn’t totally finished thinking it over when he heard the door open again and reached out and snatched the business card as a man came in with a puzzled, politely distant glance at Sirius. He hurried back out into the foyer where Molly waited.

“Well,” she said, with an unreadable look, “the state has offered you a deal.”

Sirius almost laughed. They’d waited for one of those the first time around but to no avail. He hadn’t even asked if anything was likely to be put on the table now. He’d assumed the answer was a given.

“Is it a good one?”

Molly pressed her lips together. “That’s going to be up to you to decide. Come on, we can’t talk about it here.”


	8. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I told y'all lately that I love you?
> 
> I hope the world is treating you as well as can be expected. Be safe out there!

On Monday, Arthur drove Harry to the omega school.

It was in a part of town he never visited, next to an old industrial park. The building was one of those turn-of-the-century school buildings that had mostly been torn down and replaced in the affluent school districts in the seventies. Harry, who had never attended affluent schools, knew this kind of building, and its familiarity relaxed him as he watched it come into view. 

Arthur shot him a nervous look as he parked the car close to the front of the building. The parking lot was pitted and full of cracks. 

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Arthur began, “but actually, it’s . . . “ 

Harry turned to stare. “It looks fine,” he said at once. He couldn’t contain an excited smile. “Even before my presentation I had to quit school. I’m excited to go back. _Thank you_.” 

Now Arthur looked surprised. “Well, it’s a safe place, no matter how it looks. Percy went here.” He looked vaguely pained, but then smiled. “He didn’t expect to, but in the end he loved it. It got a new principal right around the time he started, and really turned around. Percy was the most academic of all the kids. Loved learning. Do you want me to walk you in?” 

“No,” Harry said firmly, opening the door. He’d always been independent and he wasn’t going to start hiding behind people now. He was still himself. His heat had only fully waned the day before but it felt like much longer. He could barely remember that ultra-vulnerable feeling or the nearly painful heightened senses. He could no longer feel the bite on his neck. 

“All right, then,” Arthur said, smiling. “Remember your phone.” 

“Yeah, I’ve got it.” 

“Good. I’ll text you if I’m running late for some reason, but I should be here right at three.” 

“Thanks, Arthur.” 

“Sure.” 

Someone else had parked while they were talking, and their passenger was getting out at the same time as Harry. He had the fleeting thought the car was familiar, and then he recognized a blond head and an unsmiling but kind face. 

“Luna,” he said, pleased and surprised. “Hi.” 

“Hello, Harry,” she said quietly. Harry didn’t think it was possible that she would have expected to see him at her school, but she didn’t seem surprised in the least. Grove School was the only omega school in the whole city, but Harry knew a lot of omega kids were taught at home. And when he’d seen Luna at the clinic, Harry couldn’t have seemed to her like the kind of kid whose guardians would shell out tuition. In fact, at that point just a few days ago, he _wasn’t_ that kind of kid. Or rather, he hadn’t realized that his life had already changed, that a support system had built itself around him before he even realized it was there. When he woke up in the clinic, he hadn’t expected to see Ron again, let alone be taken under Ron’s roof and from there, offered a long-term room of his own. Let alone be sent to _school_ , which he hadn’t thought he’d ever be quite so excited about, and — it seemed bizarre to even think the word — a family, of sorts. 

He hadn’t known the secret about his parents, his own original family, the information in and of itself more precious than anything else Harry had ever been given. Just that knowledge, that they were good people whose friends still loved them, and loved Harry by extension, made Harry feel stronger and steadier than he had even before his presentation. 

Luna waved at Arthur, who had apparently waited for them to meet up at the foot of the stairs to the entrance before driving away. 

Harry blinked. “You know Mr. Weasley?” 

“A little,” she said, looking at him with that thoughtful seriousness he was still getting used to. “He’s an omega after all.” 

Harry wasn’t sure how to take that, but asking more seemed nosy, so he just nodded and fidgeted with one of the straps on his backpack. “So you knew I was coming?” 

“No,” she said placidly. “What makes you think that?” 

“Um,” Harry said, oddly nervous. “I guess it’s how you totally don’t seem surprised to see me here.” 

She almost smiled. He saw how her mouth tugged up a bit on one side, but then the expression was gone again in an instant. “Nothing surprises me.” Before he could react, she put her hand on his elbow and led him on. “Come on. I can show you around.” 

The school wasn’t that much different than what Harry was used to. A typical public school, comically shabby and antiseptic-smelling compared to the rambling, airy campus of the private school Dudley attended. Harry found the painted-cinderblock walls and clunky window-air-conditioning units comforting, though. In his life with his aunt and uncle, school had always seemed like a refuge. Even during the years where the teachers looked at Harry like he was slow or distasteful, it was much better than being at home. 

“How many kids go here?” Harry asked as they reached the doors. He could see that the hallway beyond was lined in lockers, and there were a handful of kids standing around, the slam of metal on metal as people got their stuff or put it away. 

“Not that many of us,” Luna said, stealing another look at him. “Forty-something, depending how you count,” she said, confusingly. “And there’s just eight of us that are our age. Well, nine now, I guess.” She paused with her hand on the handlebar for the door. “Prepare yourself to be smothered,” she said, and before Harry could process, she pushed the door open. 

Everyone in the hallway — a dozen or so kids, ranging from a couple of girls who could only be eleven or twelve to a lanky pair in track shorts and tennis shoes who looked like they could be in college — stopped talking and turned at once. There was a horrible awkward moment, then everyone descended on Harry like a pack. 

It should have set off all kinds of alarms in his recently-oversensitized body, but it just didn’t. Because they were all omegas. It was like being mobbed by a pack of Labradors. There was no mistaking the friendly nature of their curiosity or the flattering sincerity of their enthusiasm. 

By the time Luna pointedly interjected that they needed to get to class or Harry would be late, he had one of the younger girls hanging off of each arm while a serious-faced girl closer to his age with a short-bobbed haircut and coke-bottle glasses casually asked him what kind of penguin was his favorite. 

“Um?” Harry asked, blinking at her, sure he’d misheard. She straightened his glasses for him, her thumb brushing the bridge of his nose, which didn’t work because they were broken and badly mended, and immediately listed to the right again when she let go. 

“There isn’t a _correct_ answer, per se,” she said calmly, while to Harry’s deep confusion cries of protest rang out from the group, and he caught a few scowls out of the corner of his eye to his deeper mystification. 

“Don’t start on that shit, Summer,” said one of the tall, athletic-looking girls, glowering at the girl. 

Summer blinked, her eyes magnified by her glasses, but Harry thought she’d widened them in a wordless gesture of sarcastic innocence. 

“Ugh,” Luna said, but didn’t appear _that_ disgruntled as she linked arms with Harry and pulled him out of the crowd. “You are all ridiculous,” she said, then added over her shoulder with a quick, wicked smile, “Crested penguins are clearly the best.” 

Harry normally didn’t like inside jokes, but this one was too bizarre to be offended by, and also a glimpse past Luna’s solemnity made him feel warm and happy in return. He let her pull him into a classroom; the heavy door swung closed on its own behind them and the loud objections of the crowd, interspersed with phrases like “No, hashtag Team Emperor!” 

Really, really bizarre. 

Harry was surprised by the room he found himself in. The classrooms of his past, in buildings like this one, were full of tables or desks and creaky, uncomfortable chairs, with a dry erase board and a sleepy-looking teacher at the front of the room. 

This room was probably designed for the same kind of use — it had a dry erase board, right where Harry would have expected it to be — but there were no desks or chairs. There _were_ a dozen or so of those bright-colored balls he thought people just used for exercise, and some floor pillows on a comfortable, squashy-looking rug in the middle of the room. 

Sitting on a ball with the same elegant balance someone might a fancy dining room chair was a woman with glasses a little like Summer’s, and wispy grey-streaked brown hair wound up in a knot on top of her head, interlaced with braided strands. She was wearing dark blue overalls, Burkenstock sandals, and a large, ornate pocket watch around her neck on a silver chain. 

“Hello, you must be Harry,” she said. “I’m one of your teachers. You can call me Sybill.” She got to her feet with a dancer’s grace. Her eye contact was so intense it was a little unnerving. Luna patted his arm like she knew what his reaction to Sybill would be, then she smiled when he caught her eye. It was a small but incredibly sweet expression, and having previously believed Luna never smiled, it struck him all the more profoundly to see it. 

He found himself smiling, too, when he turned back to his new teacher. “It’s nice to meet you, Sybill.” He stumbled a little over using an adult’s first name in a school classroom, even one that didn’t have desks, chairs, or motivational posters of mountains or wild animals. 

“Why don’t you pick a journal out of the Budding Basket?” She pointed to a set of industrial oversized shelves in the corner, like what you’d generally see in a garage. There was a plastic storage container labeled “budding” in bold cursive on a piece of duct tape. Harry’s mouth twitched as nodded, walking over to the “basket” and peering inside. 

There were, in fact, a pile of journals there in various styles; small notebooks the size of the palm of his hand, and a few larger. It was a random assortment, exactly like the clearance bin on the end-cap of a grocery store. Harry had never had a particular interest in journaling, but there was still something strangely exciting about selecting his own stack of blank pages under a dark purple cover. 

Luna had flung herself stomach-first over one of the sitting-balls. Sybill had returned to her own graceful perch. And a few more kids had come in while Harry was picking a journal. There was another storage bin, this one battered wood but labeled by the same tape-and-sharpie method as “Burgeoning.” They were reaching inside and pulling out journals with worn covers. One was a girl with long, dark hair covering her face like a curtain as she bent over the bin. It was so shiny and lovely Harry had a vivid fantasy of running his fingers through it. He was still flushed with embarassment at his own thoughts when the girl looked up and their eyes met, and he saw that her face was just as pretty as her hair. 

“You must be Harry,” said the other kid. He was petite even compared to Harry, with close-cropped dark hair, blue eyes and a ready smile. “I’m Mari,” he went on, his grin widening when Harry looked confused. “My pronouns are he and him,” he said, with a wink like he had enjoyed throwing Harry off-balance. “This is Cho. She’s shy.” 

Cho pressed her lips together like she was annoyed, but held Harry’s gaze deliberately. “Hi, Harry,” she said, her voice as low and melodic as a song. 

“Now that we’ve all been introduced,” said Sybill from behind them, the gentle authority of her voice reminding them she wasn’t just an overgrown classmate, “let’s gather.” 

Thus began the strangest school day of Harry’s life. He had Luna at his side all morning. They didn’t change classes. He couldn’t figure out what Sybill’s class even was, exactly. At first the journals had made him think English, but then she encouraged them to sketch in the pages instead, so he thought Art. But later they went outside and Sybill led them through a series of Yoga poses on the sparse lawn. So, PE? Harry was still unsure at lunch, and didn’t know how to ask. 

Lunch was at least familiar. There was a cafeteria adjacent to the gymnasium, which doubled as a lunch room like in a lot of older school buildings. The tables and benches were unfolded from anchorpoints in the walls. The food was less congealed than Harry was expecting, though, and instead of mostly ignoring each other in favor of their cliques, the gaggle of students intermingled without apparent regard for age or personality type. 

Harry’s heart beat hard at the realized-dream feel of it. Except that he couldn’t have dreamed it up; his sum total life experiences gave him too little material. It was undeniably dreamlike though, with a sort of dark shadow underlying it in the way of things that seemed too good to be true. Harry expected to lose it all in an instant, so he was determined to make the most of it while it lasted. 

Maybe that was how he found the courage to look across the table at shy, beautiful Cho after they sat down and strike up a conversation. 

“So, how long have you gone to school here?” 

She looked up at him. Her skin was so pale and smooth that her constant little blushes were impossible to miss. It occurred to Harry that she was so shy she probably hated that. He averted his eyes from her face a little, hoping it would make things easier for her. 

“I presented two years ago,” she said quietly. “I started coming here . . . a little while after that.” 

Mari, a constant presence at Cho’s side, slid onto the bench to her left with his own tray. “My parents did a blood test,” he said, answering the same question even though Harry hadn’t asked it. “So I started here when I was in Kindergarten. Thank God,” he added. “It was a lot easier to transition here, both times.” He winked again, like he was daring Harry to have questions he was too embarrased to ask. Harry couldn’t decide if he liked Mari yet; partially because Mari’s whole manner was a little exhausting, and partially because it was obvious Mari hadn’t warmed up to Harry yet. He was friendly enough, but he had a sharp watchfulness in his eyes that none of the rest had. Like it wasn’t enought that Harry was an omega; he still hadn’t decided if Harry was really welcome. 

Though now that Harry thought about it, Mari’s wariness was something Harry understood better than the others’ unreserved warmth. 

So he asked the question he was obviously being dared to ask, hoping that Mari _wanted_ him to ask, and he wasn’t failing some kind of test. “What do you mean by transition?” 

Mari smiled, still sharp-edged, but in a way that told Harry asking was the right choice. “When I came out as trans, and when I presented as an omega.” 

Harry nodded carefully. “Cool.” 

Mari’s brows rose. “Is it?” 

“Mar, God, stop,” Cho murmured. Harry realized she was blushing again, glancing at him while she elbowed Mari hard in the side. “No verbal sparring at lunch.” 

Mari laughed as though totally unbothered, squeezed Cho around the shoulders and kissed her noisily on the temple, and then gave Harry a pointed look as he removed his arm. 

_Oh,_ Harry thought, understanding dawning embarassingly late. Apparently alphas weren’t the only ones with territorial behaviors. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being herded away from a girl — maybe a little affronted, to be honest, but mostly on behalf of the girl. However, Cho didn’t seem uneasy about it, and around him, conversations were rising and falling as though Cho and Mari’s dynamic was perfectly natural. So he ate his kale salad in mostly-contented silence, amused by how many snatches of conversation further down the table seemed to touch on penguins. 

After lunch was some kind of rest period, from what Harry couldn’t tell. Since it was a warm afternoon, most everyone wound up outside. For the younger kids this was obviously a normal recess; they scaled the playground equipment in the fenced part of the lawn like a bunch of possessed monkeys, fueled by kale. The older kids sat around on wooden picnic tables positioned on the sunny side of a row of old oak trees. 

“So what do you think?” Luna asked Harry in an unlikely moment when they were alone, after Cho relented to a younger kid’s plea to sit on the swings, Mari followed, and the tall girls, Ana and Eve, went to play basketball. “Weird, right?” 

“In a nice way,” he said, and hesitated. “Do we learn like, um, normal stuff too? Or is it all yoga and . . . feelings?” 

Luna snickered, and Harry felt proud to have earned her brief smile again. “Sybil last class isn’t exactly typical, even for this school. It’s kind of nontraditional, I guess. It can be, because it’s not accredited.” 

Harry sat up. “Accredited? Isn’t that how school like, counts as school?” 

Luna shook her head. “Not really. We can take the GRE. I guess that’s more or less what we’re being prepared to do, but I’ve never heard of one of the kids from here taking it and having any trouble passing.” She pulled her knees toward her chest, sitting sideways on the bench to face Harry. “Some people say we’re better-prepared for college than a lot of other kids, because we’re self-directed. But only a few of us have gone on to anything but trade school. Albus took over the school eight years ago, and all the teachers have been hired since then. I guess before that it used to be more like you’d think — a normal school, sort of, except with teachers that were paid less than dirt and didn’t care.” Her smile was long gone now. She set her chin on her knee. “All the teachers here really care,” she said, looking at Harry with a steady attention. “Even Sybill.” 

“She seems really great,” Harry was quick to say. “It just wasn’t, you know. A desk and a dry erase board. And a book.” 

Luna relaxed, apparently satisfied by that response. “Yeah. Minerva calls it a ‘creative and respectful learning environment’ and, um, there’s something else she says about ‘arbitrary rigidity,’ but to be honest she uses a lot of big words. I’m sure it’s some kind of passive aggressive vocabulary lesson now that I think about it.” 

Harry laughed, then sobered and looked at Luna very earnestly. Clearly sensing he was about to ask something important, she looked back, brows raised. 

“One thing I do have to ask,” he said quietly, “what’s the deal with the penguins?” 

That earned him more than the smile he was hoping for, but an actual laugh, as quick and lovely as the ringing of a bell. She shook her head as she returned to seriousness, but her eyes stayed bright. 

“It is not a ‘deal,’ it’s a very serious matter. I’m glad you asked.” She leaned forward with a playful, conspiratorial air. “Let me tell you about Team Crested.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it. <3 I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas!


End file.
